What's the best free graphics editor these days?

[Krokodile]

Is it still Paint.NET?

[Krokodile]

Hey looks like that Paint.NET isn't even free anymore. The price is quite nominal at 7.49 €, though.

[Krokodile]

Oops you guys I was wrong, it IS free and that was just an option for when you want to support the Paint.NET people.

[Darkjedibob]

Paint.NET is what I use for everything.

[Krokodile]

Ok thanks I'll keep using that one.

[Wookie06]

Is paint.net better than gimp? I don't recall ever using paint.net. I have Inkscape and Krita on my list but those are probably more vector art replacements. It's been a couple years since I looked at them.

[Thrawn[numbarz]]

Everything is better than gimp.

[Darkjedibob]

Yeah, way back I tried gimp, but had a mod to make the UI more tolerable. I haven't touched it in years.

[Wookie06]

I don't remember the last time I tried using it. I know I didn't like it back then and I have no idea if there has been any effort to update. What I don't know is how I'd think about the UI since learning Photoshop but since I keep my Creative Cloud subscription going I haven't had any reason to go back to it.

[Jon`C]

Programmer art disclaimer here.

The gimpshop changes mostly got merged to upstream. I believe they are default on windows, and can be enabled by turning on single-window mode on Linux. As far as most people are concerned this is simply the default state of things.

Gimp is not good for drawing shapes or paths. I prefer PDN for that, but everything else is fine in gimp. Both gimp and photoshop have terrible user interfaces, but differently terrible, so because photoshop is more popular people tend to think it’s better. If you want to do art as a professional you will probably be forced to learn Adobe stuff. If you just want to photoshop memes or whatever, thegimp is great.

Edit: I haven’t tried my Wacom tablet in the gimp on Windows. On Linux it is bad. I don’t know whether it’s because of Linux or because of the gimp.

[Wookie06]

I don't particularly like the user interface in any Adobe product I've used. On top of that, some of the software is similar enough but clearly each retain many of their own interface quirks to make things various levels of confusing as you switch between applications.

[SMLiberator]

GIMP gang

[Reverend Jones]

Amusingly, the GIMP UI of decoupled windows kind of starts to makes sense on a tiling window manager.

[Nikumubeki]

I've lost my PSP7 installation disc so whenever FGR07 will die, I'm probably gonna have to switch to crayons.

[Nikumubeki]

Also, the 2005 version of this thread

What's the best free graphics editor these days?

Photoshop

That's not free!

... If that's what you want to believe.

[Krokodile]

Seems accurate, FG!

[Ni]

Programmer art disclaimer here.

The gimpshop changes mostly got merged to upstream. I believe they are default on windows, and can be enabled by turning on single-window mode on Linux. As far as most people are concerned this is simply the default state of things.

Gimp is not good for drawing shapes or paths. I prefer PDN for that, but everything else is fine in gimp. Both gimp and photoshop have terrible user interfaces, but differently terrible, so because photoshop is more popular people tend to think it’s better. If you want to do art as a professional you will probably be forced to learn Adobe stuff. If you just want to photoshop memes or whatever, thegimp is great.

Edit: I haven’t tried my Wacom tablet in the gimp on Windows. On Linux it is bad. I don’t know whether it’s because of Linux or because of the gimp.

It's probably gimp that's gimped rather than linux, as I understand it drawing tablets work fantastically well with Krita.

[Nikumubeki]

This thread reminds me: I wonder if getting Photoshop + Premiere Elements is sufficient in lieu of getting the whole Creative Cloud thing. I mean, at some point I'm probably gonna have to reformat and/or get rid of my 2014 computer and thus the Creative Suite 5.1 on it.

[Wookie06]

$600 a year is practically free. Just do that.

[Nikumubeki]

The most annoying thing in all this is that I wasn't able to find the Paint Shop Pro 7 installation disc from my parents' belongings, so if/when I'm gonna have to try copypasting the entire PSP7 directory from my current backup computer to a new computer and that won't work - boh!

( PSP7 still being my main tool for "fancy" graphics, f.ex. https://www.moddb.com/mods/nihilum/i...plash#imagebox since on this computer I use Clip Studio Paint for basic graphics f.ex. https://www.moddb.com/mods/nihilum/i...n-dlc#imagebox )

[SMLiberator]

I use GIMP exclusively and never had any problems with it.

Then again the only things I use it for are for making music album arts and JK textures

[Wookie06]

I used to use a version of Paint Shop Pro, 4 I think, on an old Pentium 133. That computer still works and last time I fired it up I found it was still on there. I thought it was lost in a reformat. It's a demo or shareware version that literally just has one nag screen when you launch it but is completely fully functional. I imagine that it should actually notify me that I'm around 8000 days past my trial period if it were the original install and the clocks were accurate. There were somethings I remember liking in that program far more than more powerful and featured software.

I still keep a Creative Cloud subscription but I don't know how long that will be the case if I'm not using the software to make money or otherwise getting great enjoyment out of it. Fortunately the student cost is greatly reduced.

[DSettahr]

I've tried to use Gimp a few times. I'm sure it's a decent program, but my needs weren't important enough for me to be willing to put forth the (perceived) effort into learning it.

For (admittedly very casual) vector graphics work, I've been using Inkscape. I've found it to be fairly intuitive (with the occasional google search for tutorials along the way).

It's not free but for photo editing, I bit the bullet and paid $99 for a life time license for Lightroom. Definitely worth the cost, IMO. The only thing it doesn't do (to my knowledge) that I wish it could do is clone from one image to another (you can clone within an image easily enough but you're limited to a round brush).

[Spook]

Lightroom is essentially required for anything approaching serious photography, it's super great and the persistent license I got back in 2011 is one of my best purchases.

[Wookie06]

I've heard a professional photographer justify the (I think it's still) $10/month for Adobe's Photoshop/Lightroom package by pointing out you would have been spending more on just film and developing. I actually think that's a fair point and professionals (and maybe even enthusiasts) should be open to the idea.

I used the spot healing tool in Lightroom to wipe out an entire row of chairs in a group graduation photo I made with excellent results.

[Freelancer]

Is the decoupled windows thing why people say Gimp has a bad UI? I always liked programs that do that when it makes sense, which is also why I like Angband's UI.

[Impi]

I always hated the decoupled windows in Gimp. They'd always be hidden behind one of my other windows, when I needed quick access. Luckily that's easy to turn off.

[Jon`C]

GTK does a good job looking like native widgets, but a terrible job behaving like native widgets. That means anything that uses GTK on Windows feels subtly off, which is the worst kind of off-feel. Java apps all have the same problem.

Nobody complains about Photoshops custom widget toolkit because it both looks and feels extremely non-native. PDN isn't quite native either, but it uses winforms which at least gets close enough.

Gimp and photoshop both have basically terrible UIs, but Photoshop is more popular and gimp isn’t trying to copy it. Usually the differences are neutral, but sometimes they’re super bad like the shape drawing stuff I mentioned. Photoshop has dedicated tools for drawing shapes. Gimp has an only-programmers-could-love-it generalization of shapes with paths/selections, which probably saved someone some typing but doesn’t match the way people think.

[Reverend Jones]

You know what finally got me to memorize the Gimp's keyboard shortcuts for tool selection? The blasted new icon theme that shipped in the last couple of years. I couldn't find anything. And actually, I just got the motivation to change it back. Much better, now it again looks like a graphics program, with recognizable icons instead of rounded pastels that look more like someone's emoticon pack.

[DSettahr]

I've heard a professional photographer justify the (I think it's still) $10/month for Adobe's Photoshop/Lightroom package by pointing out you would have been spending more on just film and developing. I actually think that's a fair point and professionals (and maybe even enthusiasts) should be open to the idea.

I used the spot healing tool in Lightroom to wipe out an entire row of chairs in a group graduation photo I made with excellent results.

I thought you could still buy Lightroom 6 outright for a single one-time $100 payment, but a quick google search reveals that they stopped selling a permanent license for it in April 2019.

Here's hoping that Lightroom 6 keeps running for me for a few more years at least... I guess at that point (once the software is so incompatible with next gen OS's it can't be made to run) I'll probably have to consider something subscription based.