Gimp Tutorial for Idiot?
I've been trying to use Gimp to replace other options for years now, but it feels so abstruse and severely inefficient. I used to use Photoshop around 15 years ago but have stuck with Paint.NET since - my problem is that I now use Linux and paint.net isn't available natively. I was using Pinta, but it just is like temu paint.net, and I wanted something more/better (also it has a number of bugs that can easily frustrate me and often crash/hang when doing work on larger files or for longer times).
And for decades, people (both Windows and Linux users) have tried selling me on Gimp. I've tried over and over to get into it, but nothing made sense and it took way longer to do simple things than I thought it ought... but I'm trying for reals about 10 years since my last attempt.
Please does anyone have a page that explains how to do things without everything being convoluted? There seem to be no ways to turn commands into keybinds or icons I can just click, and all the keyboard shortcuts I find are in relation to nothing I want to do. Ultimately, I prefer keyboard shortcuts, but I can do icons as well.
Latest example: I want to draw a rectangle outline. Should be simple, but there is no tool to draw shapes (at least that I can find, and the tutorials online don't seem to imply the existence of one either). Okay... I have to select the rectangle select, then I have to go to the menu (Edit) and choose Stroke Selection... which pops up another menu with a ton of options. That's great and all, but in every other program I've ever used (even MS Paint!) you just click an icon and make the rectangle. If you want to alter the shape or something you right click or hold click, or maybe you can bring up a menu. But if I want to make a number of rectangles over and over? Even with keyboard shortcuts I have to make the rectangle (no issues there), then click Edit, "s" apparently takes me to the stroke menu, then enter. Bloated at best.
So, if anyone has a good tutorial or something similar that can help me out here, or an alternative Linux-based raster graphics editor that is free, I would greatly appreciate to know of it/them. I really want to like Gimp, and I'm hoping someone here can either help me get into it or direct me elsewhere. Thanks!
Edit: I realise I forgot to mention, I did use Krita for a bit. It felt like an in between Pinta and Paint.NET, but iirc, it crashed somewhat often or had enough bugs that I went back to Pinta.
You probably don't need a tutorial. People who hate GIMP generally hate it not because it's the worst thing out there, but because they are used to using something else. It's like picking up a fountain pen after spending your whole life writing with ballpoints; it's gonna feel weird and you might have more errors before, and then you get used to it.
Obviously an image editor is much more complex than a pen, so you'll have to put more effort into it; in this case, that means actually sitting down and reading the documentation. Go through it and try out each feature and see how you like them individually and how they will fit into your style.
Admittedly, it's been a hot minute since I've used GIMP because it's been a long time since I've had photo editing as one of my job responsibilities. But more recent years have seen me getting into art programs which are drammatically different from what I've been used to using. Aseprite, for instance, has a ton of tools and features that are specific to the pixel art domain. For these things I actually found watching and reading tutorials to be counterproductive about half of the time because seeing someone do something is a very different thing from doing it yourself. Doing it yourself will cause you to make mistakes, but if making the perfect art every time is your goal you are setting yourself up for failure. Learning is making mistakes.
I would agree with your original posit (People who hate GIMP generally hate it not because it's the worst thing out there, but because they are used to using something else) except I often make efforts to change what I'm used to to see if there may actually be a better way. I've swapped to Linux from knowing Windows (and knowing how to make Windows do what I want and how I want it done), and at that I ditched a DE and chose i3... so very little mouse usage on my desktop. I have found it has streamlined so much of my efficiency and it makes me sad when I have to use my Windows laptop for work. I've also swapped to the dvorak keyboard, which was excessively frustrating as at the time I was easily around 120+ wpm (and it dragged me down to around 20-30) but it felt rewarding, except none of my games really kept the keybinds (and holy crow that's a mess to rebind every different game!). So I went back to qwerty (though I did get around 50 wpm on dvorak).
I just feel that anything I want to do is not streamlined for efficiency. I'm not using it on a tablet to draw, I'm typically doing minor/menial photo editing, including resizing, cutting and pasting, and currently, keeping track of achievements in a game by highlighting certain bits on a screenshot (hence the need for rectangles), erasing the ones I complete, moving the bottom ones up to the voids I've created, simple stuff like that. But I feel that there is no simple anything. It's not that it's different, it's that it's impaired or deliberately limiting.
I also tried to use Gimp after using Photoshop for a while 15+ years ago. I find I enjoy https://www.photopea.com/ better. It's an online editor similar to how Photoshop is/used to be. It is free with ad support. (Although I think you can pay to remove ads as well)
To be honest it's been 10+ years since I last tried Gimp... So maybe I should give it a try again. Either way, photopea meets 90% of my needs these days for basic photo editing with layers.
Photopea is surprisingly good. Others in the thread have mentioned all of the best alternatives I'm aware of. Inkscape is great though not an all in one solution.
I've revisited GIMP multiple times over the years because I want it to be a viable photoshop alternative. It just isn't. You can theoretically do everything you need to do but it will take you more time than it's worth. Like its name, it's just awkward. The most recent time I looked at GIMP the thing that stood out is how little had changed in the years since I previously tried it.
So, I'm seconding suggestions like Photopea, Inkscape and Krita.
If the high cost of photoshop (or illustrator) is the barrier, but spending money on software isn't, then Corel Paint Shop Pro deserves a mention as a much cheaper, subscription free, PS alternative. No native linux support though.
Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one with this view on GIMP! I've tried Inkscape but it was a little too much iirc, and Krita was good but had some bugs. Maybe I'll try the latter again, as I do not wish to use an online option.
Interesting, but I shy away from anything that I can't use without the internet. I might look into it for temp stuff though.
A bit late here, but some time ago I found an offline version of Photopea on Github, in an Electron wrapper I guess. No idea if everything works or how recent the version is, but if you do like it it's worth trying. I don't have the link but iirc there was more than one.
Interesting, and it's available via yay. I'll look into it, thanks!
As a programmer, I love GIMP, it feels like it's designed exactly for my use case where other tools aren't as precise.
For drawing shapes, if they are all the same, you can do your selection and use the Stroke Selection button (icon that's in the bottom right) in the Selection Editor. After you stroke for the first time, clicking that button while holding shift will repeat the same stroke. That should allow you to do a different selection and then shift click it for a faster workflow.
Oh btw, every item in a menu should have a hotkey even if one isn't shown. For example, let's say you want to merge two layers, you can right click the top layer and hit
W. iirc in the past, the letter to click was underlined, I don't know if they removed the underline but everything in the menus should have a button.Otherwise, you can generate the shape in an external program and paste it in GIMP.
You should really view GIMP as an image editor where you work with existing images instead of as a drawing application.
Edit: Looks like what I'm talking about is called an accelerator or an access key and you can see the underline when you hold alt and then navigate in the menus.
Edit2: For every element that you hover in the user interface, you can hit F1 to bring up context appropriate documentation.
GIMP is what developers without graphic work experience think people with graphic work experience want, without understanding what actually makes the standards in the industries the standards. The end result is a graphics editing software for developers and those with similar minor editing needs or an inherent masochistic tendency (technically the same as being a developer). I heard they finally added non script basic drop shadows in the latest big version tho. Give them another 15 years.
I use Krita or Inskape these days. Don't really like GIMP.
It will finally get a proper shape tool in version 4 though... The issue is that version 4 has been in alpha for a long time and was supposed to be released like a year ago but they're really behind the schedule with it. But one day it will be out, and then you'll be able to draw a rectangle.
yeah, I think it's best to think of GIMP as its namesake: used to manipulate images, especially in bulk operations. it's really poor for illustration and is unintuitive to the needs of the creative audience it's tried to seek for decades.
That said, I do find it a bit surprising how no one over this time has tried to fork GIMP and make a more intuitive front end for artists. Perhaps those people are prone to be headhunted by Adobe/Autodesk, or prefer to make their own paid software (GPL license would go against a commercial product).
There actually used to be a fork called gimpshop or something like that.
I had no idea it was originally for bulk operations. That makes way more sense.
It's a stretch to say it was designed for bulk operations. But it's probably not far off. Scripting is built into the core of GIMP and every operation you can do can be accessed by a script. This makes it very easy to scale some work flow once you figure out what you want to do, in ways Krita and especially Photoshop can only dream of.
The downside is thst the docs (from my 3.10 experience) werre dreadful. Finding whar operation to do was painful and GIMP uses its off color brand of python for scripting. So even as a programmer it can be painful figuring stuff out.
Krita is a bit more accessible but does have its own quirks and limitations. For someone used to photoshop it would be easier to pick up.
You can search keyboard shortcuts for stroke-to-last-values and assign it to a key for faster use.
I'd say in general though for just drawing you're better off using paint apps like Krita or the simpler Drawing or Pixieditor then importing it to gimp for better layer manipulation and filters.
Free raster graphics editor available for Linux:
https://pixieditor.net/
Free web-based raster graphics editors:
https://www.photopea.com/
https://graphite.rs/
Pixieditor and Graphite are new and quite interesting, they have node-based procedural graphic editing capabilities. Can be used for both vector and raster.
If you're just looking to make basic shapes/diagrams (like just a rectangle with an outline), online diagram editor https://draw.io/ may be adequate.
I hope you find the right one for you! Comfort with the UI really does make a difference for me with my own workflow.
For keyboard shortcuts at least, you can follow the official GIMP documentation on to change them.
As for everything else... Yeah, I feel GIMP has a high learning curve and not the best UI. It was the first program I used after MS Paint, and I learned mostly through just messing with the tools on colors to make textures that looked cool. After using other art programs since then, it definitely feels more clunky, in part due to all the dialogue boxes. (That said, I love the select by color tool since I can restrict it to contiguous regions and select them easily. It's the one tool that's always felt clunkier in other programs.)
I have no recommended tutorials myself since I haven't used it in years, nor do I use Linux, but what exactly do you want to use it for? Digital painting, image editing, both...? That can impact the tutorials recommended. Or people who use Linux can recommend alternative programs for that specific purpose.
You also may want to try Krita again depending on how long ago you tried it. The issues you had may have been resolved by updates.
I tried GIMP over a decade ago and faced similar issues. I had too much experience with tools like photoshop. And honestly, I don't think GIMP is a great substitute for those kind of tasks.
I know you probably aren't looking for alternatives, but I want to point out what I ended up doing after paying adobe too much money. I finally found Affinity Photo and while it does cost money, it's a one time charge per major release,like Adobe used to be. The UX is familiar, it's very powerful, and you can avoid paying yet another subscription.
For me, I have too little time to dedicate to learning the GIMP workflow. I just need to be able to open the program and start working, which i can do with Affinity.
Just a note that Affinity has stopped selling their software, at least for now. They posted a cryptic announcement about "creative freedom" arriving at the end of this month, and they've closed their store in the meantime. Folks are speculating that they may be moving to a subscription-based model and/or incorporating generative AI. (Personally I think it's not great for them to be act shady about their announcement, they should have just announced whatever it was straight up instead of making themselves look less trustworthy.)
I signed up for their announcement email because I want to know if I’ve wasted my money with them and need to uninstall their apps.
Well, apparently I've not been paying attention. If I were to guess, they are going to grandfather previous purchasers in so they don't want that number to grow. Disappointing in either case.
That said, I'd rather give them money than Adobe.
I'd be willing to shill out some money if it's what I want/need, especially on a one-purchase-covers-all basis. But I believe someone else pointed out Affinity is no longer selling things in preparation of revamping their model, and apparently it seems to be so.
As someone who uses gimp regularly: There are things it does really well, and things it's ridiculously, inexplainably bad at. I know how to use selections and paths and I do use them on occasion, but if I need to draw with simple shapes, typeset (do text things) or manage the positioning and alignment of a large number of shape and text objects I just switch to another editor.
My strategy has always been to use GIMP when I already have images. It's good for slicing them up, scaling, filtering, etc. It can of course do the initial image creation if you're dedicated, but I've always used it more in a post-processing role once I already had a base image ready.
If I'm starting graphics from scratch, where I start depends on what kind of graphic. If it's primarily geometric or text-based, I start in Inkscape. If it's more artistic then I start in Krita. It's the exports from those that end up coming over to GIMP in my workflow at least. "Image manipulation" rather than "image creation" basically. I'm sure others have radically different workflows, though.
To me, GIMP is for image editing, but Krita is for painting, drawing, illustration.
I haven't done this in a while, but I recall that you can assign hotkeys to any menu item. There's a setting you turn on, then, when you hover over a menu item, you press your desired hotkey to assign it.
Default shortcuts: For drawing shapes, I use the fill shortcut the most (Ctrl-, or Ctrl-.), but to just stroke an outline, Ctrl-'. That, as you've found, will bring up a dialogue box, but there's also a separate assignable shortcut to stroke with the last used values (default Ctrl-").
Not here to sell you on GIMP (because it just isn't the powerhouse and legend that Photoshop is), but thought I'd help you with some of your pain points with GIMP. Me, personally, GIMP's #1 missing feature is non-destructive editing. I still use GIMP, though, because it's half decent, and freely available on Linux. For certain kinds of projects, Canva (especially paid) is easier, especially for less-technical people (not implying that you are).
This video was just posted from somebody who uses both PS and Gimp, it's really basic stuff you probably already know but the key configs and things she links to could be helpful.