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I must be the only GIMP user that has never complained about the UX. But I have never used Photoshop so I’m not fighting muscle memory.

Most of the comments here talk about the GIMP UX. Fair point, but misses the article entirely.

> [Øyvind] is the maintainer of GEGL and babl, the color engines of GIMP. His work was instrumental in (among many other things) the long-waited non-destructive filters implemented in GIMP 3.0

The interview is about Pippin's background (fine arts) and current (as of the time of the interview) work, and in some details about the graphics engine underneath GIMP (GEGL).

FWIW, it doesn't touch on the UI/UX side at all. So even you Photoshop lovers may find it interesting :)

I love gimp, it is the only “heavyweight” image editor I ever learned to use, and that choice has saved me so much money in software subscriptions! Thankyou maintainers!

You can always pirate Adobe prod cts, it is always morally correct

I love the contrast between this and one of the next comments:

>In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software.

Both are absolutely true!

GIMP has been, for many years, the best free graphics software available. At the same time, it's so horribly anti-user (and anti-usability) that if it wasn't free software, the company behind it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

"Anti-user' and "anti-usability" are far too harsh. Outdated, yes. A product of 1990s-era UX design, absolutely. But every changelog has some mention of a UX improvement, and actually using the product at version 3.0 is, dare I say, pretty enjoyable once you unlearn things and pretend it's Photoshop 6.0. Single-window mode by default helps a ton.

I have used far worse software from commercial outfits. You would not believe how much aerospace and specialized CAD stuff still uses Motif and doesn't support scroll wheels or extra mouse buttons.

My biggest beef is the UI constantly goes through massive changes at each release. Options moved, mysterious new configs, literally it is as if you're using an entirely new piece of software every few years.

For those of you who daily drive GIMP, well you'll be up to speed quickly. For those of us that use it once a month or so, for a day, it quickly becomes exceptionally annoying.

I'm happy if the UI isn't the best. I frankly don't care what the software looks like, or if the GUI is purdy. I just want it to work, work well, and frankly that menu items don't magically disappear, get merged into other sub-menus, or that now you can suddenly close a tool, and never ever get it back without finding some obscure menu item to re-activate it.

And if you use GIMP frequently, and are about to say "But, that's easy, you just..." then you're not a casual user.

There are more casual users than you think.

(this goes right up there with devs who change config options in files from option= to Option=, and configs= to config=.

I mean, leave it alone. Forever.

"Updated config options to bring them inline with StudlyCaps" or whatever turns my day into a ragefest filled anxiety attack on upgrade.

"Changed all config names to US English from British spelling." What?! OK b112, you now have to deal.

I don't want to deal. I want to eat doritos.)

It's funny to hear that, because we get a large number of complaints that we haven't changed GIMP's interface at all from 2.10 to 3.0 and that's why we're "failing".

We try to be respectful of existing users (and again, we get lots of complaints that doing so "holds GIMP back"). If you have some examples of massive changes you've dealt with (and from what version to what version), I'm happy to look into them further.

The one saving grace one might find is that a lot of people trying it already had some experience with e.g. Photoshoot and are already influenced by it. And just because Photoshop does it one way doesn't mean it's the way. But honestly, no, it's just bad bad. Thanks for all the hard work for free, but it's just really difficult to use[1]. It would've been better to do less.

[1]gave up on it 10 years ago, so don't know, maybe things changed

I think that the weakness doesn't lie within GIMP itself.

Imagine that you are a car hobbyist. You know your way around a wrench.

But then you step in to an F1 garage or even your local repair shop run by that one guy who inheritted his father's shop in the 50s and has thrown a tool away since the Reagan administration.

It's going to be possible for you to do everything that you know how to do, and even to learn some things along the way, but you're not going to be anywhere near as efficient as you were in your garage where the only tools you have are the ones you regularly use and you know the locations (perhaps roughly) of everything.

The same could be applied across any number of domains. Knowing your way around and ambulance isn't going to go as far as you might think it would in a surgical suite.

Knowing some python isn't going to get your pulls accepted in Canonical, Debian, etc.

Knowing your professors preffered citation methodology isn't going to gaurantee academically succesful searching of The Library of Congress or even the New York Public Library.

etc etc etc

GIMP represents nearly the totality of knowledge relating to image manipulation, and you can lay it out to perfectly match your personal knowledge and workflow, but it simply is not possible to have it automatically laid out to perfectly match everyone's workflow.

Could it be more intuitive? Perhaps, but moving things around now is liable to break the workflows of tens of thousands who have learned to use and love GIMP the way that it currently is.

For instance, having only ever used GIMP as my primary image manipulation tool, I can and do have some of the same complaints against [insert other software] that people routinely level against GIMP. The last time I tried to use Photoshop I spent more time in tutorials and help pages than doing actual image editting because Photoshop is as unfamiliar to me as GIMP is to a Photoshop user.

I wonder what would it take o implement layout compatibilty packs , to allow the user at install to select which layout they are most comfortable with , v2.0 , Photoshop compatible , stable or experimental. All calling into the same base.

Of course such an effort most likeky would need to be a paid effort fulltime rather than volunteerr work.

It always felt sad to me it never reached the usablility/familiarity that Blender has.

There's a third-party theme called PhotoGIMP which changes the layout and shortcuts to match Photoshop: https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP

Longterm, we have a roadmap item for an Extensions platform: https://developer.gimp.org/core/roadmap/#extensions

So basically, you could download plug-ins, themes, shortcut presets, etc, directly into GIMP. We have a lot of pieces done - we just need someone to focus on it to finish.

I don’t often do much with image editing, so GIMP has been perfectly adequate for me for decades. I’ve never rented a copy of Photoshop and don’t care about it.

I’ve noticed small but consistent improvements over the years. People who complain about the UX should just go use Photoshop. It’s fine. Layers work well, retouching and filters are easy. I don’t really understand the complaints.

I’m very glad GIMP exists, and I hope it continues to make FOSS haters cope and seethe for the next 50 years. Keep whining about the name please!

What a mindset. Deep respect!

"And it turns out there are a couple hundred people already who would like me to continue writing code and sharing it publicly and openly. That at least sustains me roughly on the level of unemployment benefits in European countries. And I hope that this will even slightly increase – I will not have a Silicon Valley level software developer salary, but I’ll have enough money to cover my expenses."

Username checks out. ;)

On my Windows PC it takes GIMP 15 seconds to start and get into a state where I can edit. It loads palettes, initializes and what not, according to the splash screen text. That's too slow, so I never use it for quick image edits like crop, scale or color changes. But that in turn has the effect that I never learn the unusual UI. Which means that for more complex task I avoid it too. Other zero cost tools like the web based Photopea loads super fast and mimics the UI of leading image editing suites. It thus beats GIMP on both quick and easy tasks and more complex tasks.

If it started faster, you still probably would find it a bit unwieldy for crop scale and simple color changes. I wish it did those things better, but on the other hand it seems like it would be appropriate to have a simpler program for quick tasks as well.

And I say this as somebody who rather likes the gimp.

> 2026-02-22 by GIMP Team

I am confused

> This interview took place on February 4th, 2017

No need to be confused, the opening paragraphs explain the discrepancy

> Unfortunately, the rest of the interviews from that event have never seen the light of day - until now!

Not really -- It invites speculation as to why they were not published for 9 years. And, are the words spoken a decade ago still valid?

They weren't published because the person who interviewed everyone is now the project maintainer, and ran out of time to do transcriptions. :)

I volunteered to help with transcription, so I was given several audio recordings and started working on them. The first "resurfaced" one was Simon Budig: https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/11/01/simon-budig-interview-w...

There's about 4 more from another event which I'll be working on between coding and other things. There's definitely some material that's a bit dated (for instance, the comment about non-destructive editing), but I think it's still interesting insight into development.

Sure, but it explains the dates. Which is all that you originality highlighted as your confusion. Perhaps you can query them directly about your other curiosities?

I think the interview is interesting regardless if some of the details within are dated or not.

GimpKrita would be perfect

In my honest opinion, GIMP is a horrific piece of software.

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That’s a cool name..

Kamelåså? Ah, Kamelåså!

You just bought 1000 litres of milk!

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" It is strange how the media exploration experiments I do in code seem to not really have much cultural worth in society."

Not to me, and -- this is a thing I keep harping on -- love it or not, I can explain why.

You live in a society, and as a result you have to do a little bit of homework on names, and what they mean, and how they are percieved by the outside world. It is SUPER interesting to me that the first bit of this interview is literally ABOUT NAMES, and that the following point is missed.

GIMP is a terrible name. Atrociously bad. And I still strongly believe it is a reason -- it might even be the PRIMARY reason -- why such an otherwise great tool did not grow in popularity.

>how they are percieved by the outside world

The vast majority of the outside world does not perceive the name the way you do. Even the majority of English users doesn't, as most of them learned standard English as second language at school without being taught vulgar Anglo-American slang.

If you want to pursue linguistic sensitivity, the just direction is against anglophone domination, even if impractical. We should be taking power away from the most powerful and redistributing it back to the weak, not the other way around.

So, it is the anglophones who should stop calling people using a nasty word instead of expecting international, multilingual communities to adapt to their culture.

Let me be clear, this has nothing to do with pushing "linguistic sensitivity" for its own sake. Nothing.

Look, the author himself wondered out loud why he wasn't more deservedly popular. I put forth a reason why. PR is real. I understand if you really want to keep the name at the possible cost of popularity; but I don't think it's worth it. I wonder if he understood the possible tradeoff.

Words have different meanings in different languages and regions, also words themselves change meaning over time.

I've seen GIMP deployed in British schools with no issues. We should all start being adults and stop fussing because some pixels on our screen might spell out a word that in a certain context and certain part of the world might be seen as offensive

What is the name for this fallacy, "We should all start being adults"? Everyone who is an adult can understand that names matter, especially ones intentionally chosen to cause offense or a ruckus.

First, it doesn't matter how much you or I or the commentator above us changes to "be adults". Only the saddest and most lonesome people will be the sole decisionmaker in every context they exist in.

Sometimes, you exist in a context where you need someone elses permission to use software. This is often the case for employed people.

Second, other adults will disagree with you. It doesn't make them any less "adults".

On the other hand, someone would not be unreasonable to consider you childish if you're so stuck up on your software opinions that you'll disparage everyone around you in the defense of your obscure preferred image editing program. Could you imagine implying to a room of peers that you're the only adult?

It's wonderful for you that GIMP's name has never been a problem for you. But there are about 8 billion people who are not you, and a few dozen of them are fellow GIMP users.

I've been using GIMP for most of its existence but I've faced difficulties trying to use it in school and work. Where I live, "gimp" is a word which means either a slur for someone with a motor disability or as a form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment.

(For what it's worth, the G was added in order to reference the form-fitting leather sex torture-fetish full-body garment in Pulp Fiction. The program was called 'IMP' beforehand.)

There are over 7000 languages in the world, around half of them dying or having already died due to linguistic domination, in large part English, each with its own set of culturally sensitive words.

To follow the above mode of reasoning without advantaging one or few languages, you would have to change an enormous amount of words in all languages, if not basically all. This is obviously not feasible.

If GIMP was a dirty word in a Native American language, or a native African language, there would be no debate. That we are debating this at all is because English has privileged status due to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

Hence, you are expecting us to give special, privileged treatment to the linguistic sensitivities of your dominant culture. Which is unfair, especially historically, because the hegemony was achieved by mass land steal and many genocides, which we shouldn't be rewarding by allowing further claims.

So yes, it should be expected from an adult anglophone to tolerate the existence of sordophones, words that are dirty in their dialect but not in others, especially in an international, multilingual setting. This is what it means to abstain from linguistic imperialism. This is what it means to tolerate and respect other cultures.

And to enforce tolerance, indeed it may be needed to view those who fail at this as childish.

I feel somewhat sorry to say this, but I need to be assertive here.

Gonna have to say this a bunch around here, but yours is yet ANOTHER comment shooting the messenger. You (theoretically) are championing an idea of freedom in language or something like that.

Look, people, this is PR. The author wondered out loud "why isn't he more recognized" and a reasonable answer is that "People like me, in America, who love free software and try to get people using it, run into trouble that could have been avoided if the name was changed."

You want your lesson out there on freedom of language, fine, that's what you all got. Just be honest about what you may have missed -- which I genuinely believe could have been a world in which Adobe was nowhere near as annoyingly powerful as it is (or at least had been).

Yes, every time I post this point, I get this sort of "but I'm not offended" response.

I'm not either, personally. But I live in America, a pretty strong force, for better or lately probably worse. And GIMP is very good software, but the name makes it hard to recommend or take seriously. Not even in terms of "I'm offended" but in terms of "if you thought this software was good why would you name it something like that?"

GIMP perhaps could have competed with Adobe stuff, but we will never know because this name doesn't make it out the door for a number of related reasons. Don't shoot me on this fact, I'm just the messenger.

It's my experience that every professional and educational setting I've tried to use the GIMP in has seen the name as a roadblock and had it swiftly rejected.

It's really a shame they were steadfast in that one baffling decision. It was so self-destructive to the project. I wonder what would have happened if they stayed with their original name IMP, or found a different Pulp Fiction reference to make.

If the dev team had a nickel for every time someone complained about the name, there would have enough money by now to fund the development of a UI revamp.

Now if they had a nickel for everytime someone complained about the bad UI...

But do they want to do a full UI revamp? My impression is that a lot of people in the gimp ecosystem are happy to be aggressively unwelcoming to a broader audience. They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue. They call then "snowflakes" and "SJWs" and are gleeful when they fail to make any kinds of improvements.

Some of these people can be found in this very thread.

The problem with gimp is not one of budgets, it's that many of the people involved in gimp see its current state as how things should be.

> They don't see the name or the poor ux as a bug, but as a feature, and actively attack people who want to fix these issue.

They will probably not attack people who want to fix these issues, but only those who leave drive-by one liner low effort comments about the UI.

I can't speak for everyone, but as developers we are trying to emphasis UX/UI work more. We have a dedicated repo now for user feedback, designs, and proposed solutions: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues We implement from there as we can, once consensus has been reached.

We also highlight UX/UI improvements in each new release post. Just like with coding, we rely on volunteers to help with this (you definitely don't want someone like me deciding on interfaces!) We have a couple active designers assisting us, but we're always looking for more feedback!

I grew up as a native English speaker in an English country, and had to look up what gimp means. Should the name be changed? Yes. On the other hand, I have never encountered the word outside of the context of the image editing program. That is unusual, even for an offensive term. It leaves me with the feeling that someone dug up an obscure piece of slang in order to paint the project in a negative light. (I've been using open source for long enough to know that painting open source in a negative light was a thing. For example: it used to be common to paint supporters of open source as Communist, which is treasonous in some circles.)

Green Is My Pepper is a great name.

> You live in a society, and as a result you have to do a little bit of homework on names, and what they mean, and how they are percieved by the outside world.

Amem

If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users

Usability. Focus. Heck, even this strawberry of a low hanging fruit like the name cannot be solved by a nerd committee apparently.

Then honestly you can't complain when people don't use your sw

> If there's one point where OSS stands like a sore thumb (derogatory) is in everything that makes it welcoming to general users

Depending on the circle (including lots of circles of "general users") annoying people who are obsessed about whether something could offend snowflakes is seen as welcoming.

Maybe it's the GIMP developer who should be interviewing someone who can build a decent UI and actually understands UX.

We do now have a UX repo to ask for user UX/UI reports and feedback - anyone can contribute, no coding required: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/issues

Our release posts now regularly feature a UX/UI section where we highlight the work being done. We've implemented a lot of low-hanging fruit and localized fixes, while we continue to grow our design volunteer group and build larger designs.

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