Instrumented GIMP To Identify Usability Flaws

Mike writes "New users of the GIMP often become frustrated at the application's unwieldy user interface. Now Prof. Michael Terry and a group of researchers at the University of Waterloo have created ingimp, a modified version of the GIMP that collects real-time usability data in order to help the GIMP developers find and fix its usability problems. Terry recently gave a lecture about ingimp and the data it collects. During each session, ingimp records events such as document creation, window manipulation, and tool use. A log of these events is sent to the ingimp server for analysis. The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"

representative ?

I like the idea, but will the folks who use ingimp be at all representative of the user population at large? ... Especially of the user population that would complain about accessibility / usability. Is it worth it or is anyone talking about making such a thing an integral part of any project?

Re:representative ?

This poses interesting questions. Those who are integrated enough to be willing to engage in the ingimp project are very likely to have differing behaviors or preferences. Additionally, one of the chief complaints people tend to have about usability is the inability to do something. By looking at the behavior of actions rather than desired actions, those actions which are easy to do in the current iteration will be seen as more desired, rather than simply more accessible. Meanwhile, those actions which are difficult to preform due to actual problems with the interface will be more likely to be overlooked.

Re:representative ?

I like the idea, but will the folks who use ingimp be at all representative of the user population at large? ... Especially of the user population that would complain about accessibility / usability.

My wife does Web design for University of Waterloo and she's always moaning about the usability of the GIMP. I too am more into design than development these days, so that makes two people who're--more or less--ideal for the task.

Not to mention we have both customised our GIMP's to look and behave more like Photoshop (the missus was fiddling with the keyboard-shortcuts for ages). It seems this data should be collected in this project, as I doubt we're the only ones who've changed everything to our tastes, the developers should finally realise what people want in an image editor.

On a related, by tangential, note: GIMP's new core (GEGL [gegl.org]) seems to be nearing completion, with that comes all the things people have been clamouring for. Such as non-destructable layer effects, CMYK etc. If they fix the usability and shift to GEGL as the core of GIMP it might finally become the Photoshop killer we've all been waiting for! Failing that Krita [gegl.org] is coming along very well as an image editor, it lacks a few features, but is far more usable than the GIMP.

Overall, I don't think anyone should be saying: 'year of the Linux desktop!' just yet. But this is definitely a step in the right direction. :)

Re:representative ?

As someone who began using GIMP before using Photoshop, I find Photoshop's interface to be awkward and GIMP's to be natural.

Given that a significant majority of people who use GIMP probably used Photoshop first, I wonder what percentage of "moaning about the usability of the GIMP" comes from simple acclimation to a different way of doing things? I'd be interested in seeing the results of introducing one group of people who haven't done any digital graphics work before to Photoshop, another group to GIMP, and seeing how long it takes them to feel comfortable and learn the ropes. Then, you'd have them switch tools and see how well they adapt.

As it stands, I think we're seeing a lot of selection bias.

Re:representative ?

As a person that uses both daily the ONLY part of gimp I dont like is the same crap that all other software pulls.

From version to version ,dont change where a function or item is. They moved the lighting effects all over the fricking place. and every new version seems like it's a damned easter egg hunt.

Photoshop does NOT change locations of things very often. (V4.0 compared to V8.0(cs) does have some different locations but not many)

it's what pisses off every windows user when a new release comes out. "where did they hide function "XXXXX" this time!

After using a new version of gimp for a few days, it's as usable as Photoshop. Some people lose their mind when they have to do different things in similar apps, I dont. It's like my wife who cant drive the Ford because the wiper controls are different from the GM. I find it entertaining.

Re:representative ?

Not really. GIMP does everything differently than any other app I've ever used. It doesn't take long to understand that THIS is GIMP's main UI-related problem. All they need to do to fix that mess is design the UI so that it is similar to every other app out there - single window, one menu with all the commands and a few toolbar, you know the drill. Dump GTK while they're at it.
So no, I don't think this is a case of selection bias - it's pretty clear to anyone who's used it that GIMP is simply the odd one out. I have quite a few other peeves with GIMP but those *do* stem from my own habits rather than the app's design flaws, so I won't comment on them.

Re:representative ?

The 'G' in GTK stands for "gimp," FYI.

-:sigma.SB

Re:representative ?

But when you're NOT using a multimonitor display, it's a fucking nightmare trying to arrange things in a useable, friendly manner.

My main "this is fucking stupid" remark is the irritation at having menus for each of the little sub windows. I can handle saying "File->New" on the tool palette, if I absolutely must, but everything fucking else is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Gimp is the ONLY application that EVER does things this way; the only reason I want "Gimp to be like Photoshop" is because at least Photoshop follows the same fucking UI paradigm as the rest of the god damned operating system (or desktop environment). From my novice->intermediate usage of Linux over the years (i.e. I feel comfortable I can install and get Linux to do whatever I want, but it still takes a while sometimes), I haven't found a single fucking program that does similar things to Gimp. I'm not saying they don't exist - I'd be astonished if they didn't, but I am saying the fact that MOST don't work that way is an utterly confusing lack of consistency. If Gimp is so tightly coupled with GTK, and one would assume, Gnome is pretty tightly related to GTK, then you would THINK that consistency across Gnome applications (at least those that come bundled with the vanilla Gnome release) would be pretty in tune with each other. I've not yet seen that to be the case.

That is what irritates me. Gimp will always be an easter egg hunt for me; I only use it at work since I don't have a ripped off version of Photoshop there. I would be okay with that if the UI were at least similar to other UIs on the Gnome DE. But they're not. Not even close.

This is exacerbated even more when you consider the fact that I primarily use GIMP on Windows. I realize the GIMP is targeted primarily for Linux distributions, but to expect people to be happy with a UI paradigm that is utterly foreign to their OS of choice (whether Windows or OSX) is at best silly and ignorant.

Re:representative ?

As it stands, I think we're seeing a lot of selection bias.

Well, selection bias against anyone who has ever used other computer programs, not just image editors. I don't know of many computer users who are accustomed to having a program with 12 different windows that doesn't even have a single document open.

If they want to create a new, more intuitive UI from scratch, then do it. Don't steal icons, toolbars, and palettes from Photoshop and then cry that it is unfair when people are baffled that it doesn't behave even remotely like Photoshop. There have been lots of successful image editors in the past 20 years that used different metaphors and tools and layouts and methods than Photoshop does. People don't universally complain about the horrible UI of Paint Shop Pro or iPhoto or MS Photo Editor or Lightroom or Aperture (or Photostyler or Live Picture or...).

People complain about the GIMP UI because it is a horrific example of what happens when programmers design interfaces, not because they're trained monkeys who can't operate anything but Photoshop.

Re:representative ?

Because involvement in human-subjects research is voluntary, there will always be a self-selection bias. However, we can still estimate the representativeness of the population by understanding the types of people likely to download and install ingimp, and those who are not. If you fall in the latter camp -- you'd never want to use ingimp -- we really want to talk to you. Send us an email at the email address given on the site: http://www.ingimp.org/contact [ingimp.org].

In any case, having some data is better than having no data at all. Currently, there is a very active and vibrant group of individuals working on GIMP usability issues (see http://gui.gimp.org/ [gimp.org] ). ingimp's data complements this other data to help quantify the ubiquity of behavior/activity/computer hardware setups in the wild.

Michael Terry

Re:representative ?

Anything is better than nothing.

But even just by examining a few users, you will learn a lot. We went through this exercise in an HCI course I took. We were divided into groups of 4 students and we were required to observe 4 students (no in the class) while they used predetermined website they had never seen before (usually small online stores selling furniture). The total man-hours in the assignment would have been 1 hour pre-user * 4 * 4 observers = 16 hours. The operations were simple: find a bed and matching night stand, find 4 chairs and add them to the cart, etc.

With only 16 hours of work and 4 subjects it was immediately obvious that there were significant flaws and things that could easily be fixed. For example, there were many times where the user sat there and stared at the screen because they were trying to figure out how to do what they wanted to do.

I imagine with this GIMP project you could do two things: collect data about users of gimp (distributing the tool to anyone) and hand selecting users of the tool and examining the results on a case by case basis. That should provide a wealth of information.

GIMP and Photoshop

I use Gimp on a regular basis for photo editing as well as some artwork I do. Yes, it's UI is a bit clunky but it's free and works. It takes a bit to get used to but it's not that more difficult than Photoshop. Another key to remember is that it's free. That goes miles in my book.

Re:GIMP and Photoshop

For a while, I actually believed the folks that repeated ad nauseum the mantra that GIMP's user interface was difficult compared to their beloved Photoshop. Then one day I sat down to try to do some quick photo edits on a Photoshop box. Two hours later, I gave up on its bizarre layer model and just installed the GIMP so I could get some work done.

The ease-of-use of a graphic user interface, in general, correlates far more with the user's pre-existing familiarity with the interface than it does with any design decisions of the interface itself. There are certainly areas where GIMP's user interface could be improved, but let's not pretend like it's some kind of embarrassment -- because it's not.

Re:GIMP and Photoshop

The GIMP tries to do so much that it's quite hard to make it anything less than daunting for new users. The number of windows and dialogs needed for just the simplest edit are a horror.

That said, there are some basic problems that surpass the complexity.

• The arbitrary split between "filters" and "script-fu" which places important items randomly (from the user perspective) into one of the two areas.
  
• The number of dialogs needed to save a file (in some cases: filename dialog, replacement confirmation, export confirmation, and finally format settings).
  
• The selection of color in multiple places (many plugins and tools do not use the default FG/BG)
  
• The role of channels in the UI is not at all intuitively clear
  

However, most of this pales to the limitations that are inherent in the functionality. One of my biggest gripes is that the anti-aliasing code is sloppy in non-uniformly implemented. Try this: select a circle, and then use Edit->Stroke Selection. Select a 2 pixel stroke line and go. You will get absolutely HORRID aliasing. The same thing happens (though not quite as bad) with the paint tool stroking.

Overall, the GIMP is an amazing and powerful tool, but it has some serious warts.

Fanboyism, user interfaces...

Another key to remember is that it's free. That goes miles in my book.

That is an awful mistake for F/OSS fanboys. "Oh, it's free, so we shouldn't complain". This is like being blind to the problem. If it's free and it works, why isn't EVERYBODY using it? (In other words, why is Mozilla Firefox MUCH MORE popular than the GIMP? Think about it).

Sometimes we can forget that graphical applications are meant to be used by designers who use most of their time retouching photographs and stuff. Here, time is money. And if the lack of usability in the GIMP makes me spend 5 times more the time than I would with Photoshop (and i'm being considerate), it's just not worth switching. To put it another way, Photoshop's user interface _IS_ worth the price. I still can't believe the GIMP guys CANNOT make something as user friendly (or don't want to, which is worse). It shocks me and frustrates me.

A quote from a designer's blog [intelligentdesigns.net]:

You know that Linux is ready for governments and businesses when a 30 day review points out DVD and photo editing as the main weaknesses -- and not because there are no Free Code replacements, but because they aren't quite good enough yet. The reviewer only tried two applications, GIMP and Kino. I share his feelings towards the GIMP photo editor, which I regard as an "old school" Free Code project where the developers would rather tell the users why their program is, in fact, highly usable than conducting serious usability tests and making improvements. To be fair, the existing GIMP user base, which is used to the current implementation, may also resist significant changes.

That is not to say that the quite remarkable GIMP functionality could not be wrapped into a nicer user interface. GIMPShop is one such attempt, which I have not tried. I hope that it will become a well-maintained fork; I don't have much hope for GIMP itself to improve in the UI department. I am personally partial to Krita [koffice.org] which, while still young, seems to have generally made the right implementation decisions, and is truly user-focused (as is all of KDE -- I love those guys). I am not a professional photo editor, so I don't know how mature Krita is for serious work. It is good enough for everything I do.

Ooooh... what a bold statement! The GIMP is *NOT* user-focused. Don't tell me.

See, professionals don't want just "a better pile of poo" [lostgarden.com] to do their imaging work. They (and I, too) want something that IS EASY TO HANDLE. Because in graphical applications, form is function. And this is something that many programmers (at least many of those that I've discussed with) simply fail to understand.

Re:Fanboyism, user interfaces...

Show us the patches.

And here we have it, folks: the key weak point of OSS. Perhaps, more accurately, the key failing point of the OSS fanboys.

EXACTLY! :)

Fanboys fail to understand that there is something in the world called CUSTOMERS, unable to program, unable to send patches, but with specific needs. Fanboys like software made "by programmers, for programmers". Or actually "by programmers, for themselves and screw everyone else, if you don't like MY software, fork it or fork you!".

In the link I mentioned about "a better pile of poo" we see that this kind of software, by programmers for programmers, was made in the early stages of software developers. Today, software is made by teams of developers, artists and user interface experts (aka "interaction dudes").

You know what's interesting? That fanboyism is usually greater in linux circles. Windows developers are used, accustomed to nice, friendly user interfaces - and although most of the time they make crappy software with awful programming techniques in Visual Basic, sometimes they excel and make wonderful user interfaces. (Now mix nice user interfaces with an MVC approach and woo hoo! )

I tend to think that Linux programmers are so used to hack and slash code, that they forgot what it feels like to have a nice UI, with keyboard,mouse shortcuts, context help, cut-copy-paste, etc etc. Most of the Linux open source software I've tried have a crappy interface. This is why I prefer Irfanview, Pixia and Virtualdub to the GIMP or AVIDemux respectively. By the way, I tried Jahshaka once. What an awful UI.

Update: This is just in. A friend of mine just told me: "gimp is a bunch of garbage. I downloaded it and the gui is adobe photoshop chewed up and sneezed at the monitor". Your honor, I rest my case :)

It's not that bad

At the beginning it is hard - just like many programs. But my experience is, that you get used to it pretty fast.

About that name...

So, if I invent a version that gives data on why the name sucks (the otehr main problem with the program), will the developers pay attention to that too?

But I am scared of change.

I don't remember ever having a problem figuring out GIMP. But it would drive me insane if they start changing things around on me.

Representative?

I already see one potential problem with this approach, and that is that it collects usability statistics from ingimp users, not GIMP users. How would it be guaranteed that the two groups are statistically equivalent?

(No, I have not RTFA yet.)

Gimp needs to be surpassed

There are far too many anomalies of usability, lack of features and intricacies required for Gimp. Today, Photoshop is the industry leader, and anyone doing serious editing is using it. To be successful, Gimp must surpass it in more than one way (the one way being free). Kind of like what Firefox did to IE. Unfortunately, Gimp is no where ready for that. And I get a feeling that it is (heading to) nowhere.

I have been using Gimp for a long time. When I first installed Linux it was the only program everyone used to talk about. KDE's kolourpaint was not yet there for general purpose paint-brush replacement. I have used it for years under the hood of open-source fanboyism. And I think that is the reason why it has suffered. It had no competition, and now it is just a software which you don't want to open, again.

Now, I know it is not a paint-brush replacement. But it is neither a Photoshop replacement... and the middle land is already full of other utilities. Inkscape, Krita, ... may be even Blender. The problem is that no one wants to be in the middle. Utilities need to rise to the top, or they face the fate of XMMS. I hope there will be a replacement in GTK too, just to show Gimp how to use the toolkit :)

PS: posted this on journal before... this is shameless re-posting.

The main usability flaw I find

is in getting others to use the program because of its name. Lets have a contest to rename the GIMP.

Re:The main usability flaw I find

Professional Image Manipulation Program...

Oh, never mind.

Re:The main usability flaw I find

Then who defines what is "stupid" and what is not?

While I see what you are saying, naming your software with the same name (or acronym) as a derogatory term is pretty stupid by any criteria. Ask yourself, would you use the New and Improved Graphics Generation and Enhancement pRogram? Would you tell your friends about it? Would you suggest it to your boss?

Audio-visuals

With cameras and microphones and other things:

----

"Our performance traces indicate large amounts of cussing when images are resized."

---

"Wow. During that file open, three hundred users gave the finger to the camera."

"And that one guy --"

"I don't want to talk about that guy. Wahwahwahwahwah I-can't-hear-yoooo. Don't remind me of what he did."

---

"Nine hundred instances of users hitting the computer with a hammer while cropping. At least, that what we think the accelerometers were saying."

--

"The rapid rise in temperature was probably caused by the users pouring gasoline on the system and lighting a match. We'll try to address that issue in the next release."

GIMP and multiple screens

IMHO, people should understand that the MDI way (that is, the "photoshop way of arranging the windows) was born under the assumption that you had only one screen to work with.

But with X-window based virtual desktops, you just dedicate one of them to the Gimp. Check it, your Gimp experience will improve a lot!

--
Text link ads, the easiest way to earn money with your web [text-link-ads.com]

GIMP's Typical Use

If they want to know how GIMP is typically used, that's easy. GIMP's typical and most popular use is for people to say, "Hey, you can edit your photos under Linux with GIMP, and you don't have to use Wine and Photoshop."

But professionals using GIMP for doing real work? That's atypical. Hopefully that will change.

Scary

You know, how do you recognize a project is someone's pet project? It's an overcomplicated solution for a problem with a trivial solution.

Want to find out what makes the GIMP ui suck? Ask the damn users! They won't exactly shy away from telling you.

I'm a Photoshop user and I have GIMP installed here to use the occasional esoteric plugin functionality. Let me tell you few things you can immediately get busy fixing:

1. for some reason GIMP developers decided every single thing needs its own window and its own menu bar. It's weird as f*ck: put the entire layout in a single window with integrated panel layout (similar to how Eclipse does it, for example).

2. each plugin is its own modeless exe dialog that takes arbitrary amount to start after it was called (at which time you can modify the processed image.. sometimes, and sometimes GIMP crashes because of it): create a proper lean plugin API and modal plugin dialog.

3. the menus and options are all over the place: there seems to be no strategy at all about what goes where

4. GIMP has really bad startup time, and performance, compared to commercial graphics editors (such as Photoshop)

5. There's no way at all to organize your layers in a more complex setup: there are no layer groups, layer folder, or anything like that. It's just a big sack of flat layers, that you can select one at a time, and link them together. This is Photoshop 4 level functionality, and most graphics editors are waaaay past that by now.

6. There are no proper drawing tools in Gimp at all. For a graphics package that claims to be targeted at geeks making icons and web devs making web designs, this is ridiculous. We're forced to fake our ways with selection tools and scripts, which covers only a fraction of what we need.

7. A personal issue I have with Gimp: no proper grid. I use the grid in Photoshop all the time, set on unobtrusive "pixel" mode, and usually at 8, 16, 32 pixels with subdivisors. In Gimp, no subdivisors, no pixel mode, and for some reason the *mere fast of displaying* the grid, makes everything slow down to a crawl.

SUV / New Coke / added armor fallacy.

The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"

Looks to me like they're about to fall into the fallacy that caused Daimler-Chrysler to do a redesign of the Jeep line that killed their market.

The marketing department looked at what fraction of SUVs were actually used off-road. They came to the conclusion that it was small. So they redesigned their line to be more comfortable on-road at great cost to its off-road performance.

Turns out that a significant fraction of their market was people who NEEDED the off-road capability - and had the resources to pay for it, reliably buying cars, year after year, through all economic cycles.

Jeep stopped being the car they needed and became another clone of the rest of the market: "Mall Terrain Vehicles" that LOOK like an off-road car but are really just a funny-looking small/high van that qualifies as a "truck" to escape the fleet mileage regulations. Their guaranteed market went elsewhere and they were in head-to-head competition with a slew of vehicles over which they had no advantage.

Similarly, Coke looked at all the people buying Pepsi, saw that they were younger and that Pepsi's main difference was that it was sweeter, and replaced Coke with New Coke, which was sweeter yet. Result: People who drank Coke because they liked a less-sweet drink switched to Pepsi.

And then there was the high-ranking officer in WW II who spent months counting all the bullet holes on the returning bombers, then did a big presentation on how those areas should have armor added. At the end of his presentation a lower-ranking officer asked "Shouldn't we, instead, add more armor to those areas that are only lightly holed? After all, this sample represents only the planes that came back."

= = =

I think the same thing could happen here: Paying attention to what people do a lot of just focuses on what you're already doing right - at the cost of ignoring the things that people do occasionally, or only some people do, but which they need to have. Further, the things they do rarely may be used rarely specifically BECAUSE they're hard to use and the interface needs improvement.

Or IBM optimizing the most-heavily-used opcode.

Then there was the time IBM instrumented a mainframe to determine what instructions were heavily used so they could focus their optimize-the-microcode effort on them.

They found one particular instruction that accounted for some exceedingly large fraction of the execution time. So they went to work on the microcode and doubled its speed. Then they deployed the new microcode and measured the application performance, expecting to see a big improvement.

It didn't change a bit.

After a little more research they discovered they'd optimized the idle task's wait loop.

= = = =

Collecting data can be useful. But making good decisions based on it requires wisdom and insight.

Roll Outpackages

If they roll out a package for Fedora, I'll be installing this soon. I like the idea of Gimp, but I always fumble around the interface, and rarely use it when I am not in a hurry.

Is GIMP still being developed?

Is GIMP still being developed? This is a serious question.

I've been a big GIMP fan for years. Years ago, I was excited about the 2.0 release of GIMP. It brought many new features and the UI got a serious revamp. But now it has been several years, and it seems that GIMP development has slowed down. They're still releasing newer versions with bug fixes, but no new features. For example: I recently bought a Wacom tablet, and while GIMP has Wacom support, I miss some of the things that Photoshop has, such as support for variable brush width based on tablet pressure. The long-awaited GEGL, which was introduced years ago and will supposedly add CMYK and 16-bit support, is still not ready, and to my knowledge is still pre-alpha. (Not that I need CMYK and 16-bit, but at least that silence all the complainers.)

A year or two ago I also read an article about someone wanting to sponsor GIMP development. But that effort went nowhere, as his request was eventually ignored.

What is going on? Is GIMP still being actively developed? Are the GIMP developers still interested in adding new features?

Re:Is GIMP still being developed?

GIMP does support variable brush width based on tablet pressure since version 1.2.

And yes, it is still being developed and we are very close to finally releasing GIMP 2.4 which will bring lots of new features and usability improvements.

GIMP usability is not the issue

The problems with the gimp are mind numbingly easy for any semi-talented UI designer to spot and fix.
The problem is the development team: there's not enough of it, and there's no leadership strong enough within them to commit to a roadmap. If they only decided to stop coding for a while, decide what their end goals are (this is not a question users should be answering), plan the next few versions in advance and then actively look for new developers to implement whatever they decide on, things would look different.

Self-selected group? Self-denial?

From the presentation slides, it seems like 200 people have installed it (netting "over 100,000 commands" in the log files). Obviously more will do so in response to the Slashdot article (and appropriate web pollination)... but aren't these self-selected geeks already? How are you going to get non-geeks to install this instead of the regular GIMP (assuming you convinc them to take a look at it)?

Furthermore, how does this help determine what GIMP isn't doing properly? I mean, if you have various tools at your disposal, and GIMP sucks at doing X, then you might do half your work in GIMP and the other half in another app. So all the usability problems around X won't show up in the logs -- almost a kind of self-denial.

I use Photoshop on a nearly daily basis. Last time I tried GIMP it was not ready for professional print design, to be sure, and only probably good enough for desktop publishing or Web graphics. How about Pantone or CMYK support? Non-destructive layer effects? Variable-sized brushes? Actually useful text formatting?

Keep it simple.

The biggest problem I have with GIMP is it's interface. It's clear the application was designed by programmers and not designers. I feel like they've tried to cram too much onto the screen and they suffer from a similar problem I was with Microsoft applications. They try to offer too many ways to do things and get too technical with details. I don't need 10 different sliders for customizing a brush. If I want a custom brush I should be able to just create the graphic as I would anything else then just drag it into a custom brush box and be done with it.

Photoshop is getting progressively more bloated but I still find it more fluid than anything else. I'm not constantly hindered by the application.

The solution isn't to do more coding. The data they gather may result in solutions that only complicate the issue. What they should do is sit down with a small team of designers. Include people with experience in photo-editing, website layouts and interface design. Ideally, find people that have little to no experience with GIMP. Work with this team to develop an interface. And most importantly, keep things simple.

Inevitably, most applications end up being overly complex because of some overwhelming desire to cram in every last feature the developer can dream up. There also seems to be little planning. Build a set of guidelines and adhere to them. And one last thing, be sure that all essential function can be activated via the keyboard. When I'm doing time-consuming production I don't want to hunt around for small icons, or be constantly switching between the mouse and keyboard.

gimp vs. photoshop

you know what's odd? everyone always hears "gimp is hard to use" blah blah blah, but the other day i tried to use photoshop for the first time... and i couldnt figure it out. for one: how do i zoom in by more than 1x at a time? 2. where the hell is the bucket fill button? 3: how in god's name do i set the transparency of a color?

i couldnt figure it out. and i had to go back to the gimp. that's my story. hope you enjoyed it.

Expert in usability

I watched the video, and the only thing that stuck in my mind, is that I think you're not qualified to study usability if you have to Alt-Tab through a bunch of firefox instances because you haven't discovered tabs yet.

Here's a Hint...

Clone Photoshop. It may not be the best interface, but I can assure you most people will be familiar with it.

Isn't usability just...

... a measure of what you are used to using? :set sarcasm

I've been using the Gimp since around July 1996. As it was my first experience at using graphics software, I found that once shortcuts and mouse clicks were remembered, using it was no problem. The problem occurred when I was forced to use Photoshop for a job I had. I found the layout of the interface clunky and the whole single window think was crap to work with. I just wish the Photoshop developers would get their act together and set the layou more like the Gimp, and then maybe Photoshop could be the next Gimp killer. :set nosarcasm

They need a tool for that?

I can tell them the first flaw right away: The tool windows and such get hidden behind the current image window when the focus changes. If there's an option to prevent that I haven't found it (which would be another usability issue).

Another major annoyance is that brushes can't be scaled. In Photoshop, if you need a brush size that's not in the presets you just drag the size slider, in GIMP you're fucked.

Well, at least those were present in the last version I used.

Novel Idea

Two simple words: Parent Window. Sure the toolboxes have the ability to dock to the main toolbox but if you want to see all of your image my maximizing it you have to switch between windows to get at your toolbox which becomes extremely tedious, even with shortcuts.

remember mozilla?

Remember before Mozilla was done, everyone used to complain about how crappy Netscape was, and how it really needed lots of work.

Then Mozilla, Galeon, Firefox, etc. came out, and everyone dropped Netscape like a hot stone.

Any work put into making Netscape better was just wasted.

GEGL is not done yet. Perhaps history will repeat itself?

the way i see it

GIMP developers just need some healthy FOSS competition. Competing with the likes of photoshop is too much right now. Another graphics package needs to be started. The competition would get these dev's in gear. I believe the only kind of competition that exists in FOSS community is withing itself, not from closed source packages. I just wish I was a mad hacker cuz then ofcourse I wouldnt have to be saying this and instead doing it! But I am just a 3d artist... :\ \

Time to wake up to the real problem

Lack of user feedback is not the problem with the gimp. Users have being telling the Gimp programmers for years what's wrong with their UI.
The problem is that gimp programmers ignore all critism of their UI and likewise they will ignore this ridiculously complicated solution to gather user feedback.

It's not that Gimp is hard...

...it's that people used to using Photoshop on Windows have to learn a different UI to make Gimp sing and dance the way they can make Photoshop sing and dance, and after mastering one program, most people don't want to have to learn something new.

Back in the day, I used the freeware Paint Shop Pro (v.4, IIRC) on Win 3.1 and later Win 98. It took me a long time to learn Paint Shop Pro's UI, but I did finally learn it, and even really liked it. Eventually I upgraded to PSP 7.0 on Win2K, and had to learn the UI all over again. At first, I hated it and wanted to use the old UI I was used to, but finally, I figured it out. A little later, I switched to Linux and started using the Gimp. At first, just like I had done with both versions of PSP, I was unproductive because it was new, and I hadn't figured out how to use all the tools. A year or two later, my wife took a web design class at the local university where they used...you guessed it, Photoshop. She can't stand Paint Shop Pro or the Gimp, because she learned Photoshop, and is used to the way it works. So....when she ran into difficulty with Photoshop, guess who she always asked for help? And you know what? I had as much trouble doing anything in Photoshop as a Photoshop pro would have using the Gimp. Fast forward to the present, and while I'd rather use the Gimp simply because it's what I use most, and therefore what I am most familiar with, I *can* use any one of these three programs. I find PSP is a little easier for creating animated gif's (to be fair, I've not tried this with Photoshop). My wife has added some phenomenal effects to photos with Photoshop that I haven't been able to duplicate with the Gimp, but I find the Gimp easiest for most everything else.

Okay, that's anecdote, I'm a computer geek, and maybe I'm just weird. However, my experience at work bears out my personal observations. We're a small company, and we simply can't afford to buy Photoshop for everyone here who needs to occasionally edit or retouch an image, so we put the Gimp on our employees' computers. Guess what -- while they might need a little help getting started, everyone that has used the Gimp has learned to use it with very little fuss, and most of them who have also used Photoshop gripe about what a PITA it is compared to the Gimp...because they use the Gimp more often.

IMHO, the Gimp isn't really that hard, but it is different enough from what most graphical design people who trained on Photoshop are used to using, and that difference can be a real barrier to someone who views computers and software as merely a tool for accomplishing something else (i.e., most everyone who doesn't read /. on a daily basis).

one idea

I know: GIVE THE DAMN APPLICATION A BACKGROUND!

Would be interesting to see the output of these automated observations, though...

Crashing

I just installed Ubuntu after using Windows for years, and I have a lot of experience with Photoshop. I've tried GIMP numerous times on Windows and I'm starting to find my way around it under GNOME. The experience is much, much better in GNOME.

I have two major problems with GIMP. One, of course, is the interface (skip this paragraph if you've read everyone else's comments). Why is the "file" menu -- or any menu other than toolbar options -- on the toolbar? There are too many windows. Windows get covered by others. Switching windows is a pain. Editing multiple images is just obnoxious. Each menu, image, submenu, and dialogue is treated as a separate window and it's horribly messy. This is a HUGE problem in Windows because there is only one desktop, and so GIMP interferes with every other program. In Ubuntu with Beryl it's not so bad because it's easier to switch desktops, so GIMP can have its own side on the cube. There's also more window control. But most computers still run Windows, and until it works better in Windows it's not going to be the next Firefox.

Second is that it crashes under Windows. It doesn't work. It's unstable. At least it was for me, on three different computers over four years, running Windows ME, XP Home, and XP Pro. Maybe it's just me, maybe it needs tweaking before it works properly, but I'm damn good at following instructions, I followed the instructions, and it didn't work. If it crashes on Windows, the 85-90% of people who use Windows probably won't adopt it.

For now, Paint.NET is a better free option for non-professional users using Windows, simply because it's more stable.

Am I the only Fireworks user here?

(Smackdowns welcome if I'm wrong about any of the following; just my personal experience.)

I've got GIMP as part of my default Ubuntu install, and it's never impressed me much. I agree with the general gist of previous comments which is that the UI doesn't need to be like Photoshop, it just needs to be decent.

The dealbreaker for me at the moment is the piss-poor Text tool. A few days ago I wanted to make some text with a border around each letter. Tried to find a border colour setting, no go. Looked up a few tutorials, and it's a frigging ten-step process using multiple layers and tools, wtf? I tried Krita, and that was even worse as far as I could tell, and I'm not sure where to go from here as far as Linux apps are concerned.

All the previous comparison comments here are in reference to Photoshop and PSP, but I recently got given a copy of Adobe Fireworks to use at work for a variety of daily tasks, (mostly straightforward stuff - cropping, resizing, adding text to diagrams, basic compositing) and I love it! Whilst everyone grimaces at the mention of its name, it does what I want easily, intuitively and well. Despite minimal graphics experience and no claim to expertise with any particular software package, I have never had to go hunting for a special tool or look up a tutorial in order to create white text with a 2px black frigging border. It doesn't seem like too much to ask, I don't see why it should be such a challenge in other apps.

+10 Flamebait and Lulz

> What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?

640x480 VESA due to lack of Free(tm) drivers.

> Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?

Neither.

Many have tried and failed.

Thank you, I'll be here all night ;)

Glad! Thought it was just me!

I recently started using GIMP after listening to years of raptured ravings by the GIMP fantribe.

Got to say I was disappointed. It's very unwieldy. Windows everywhere, missing hotkeys (annoying absent on frequently used items), no easy way to add a macro (even if you have to do the same six steps on forty photos), unclear design (a bad mental model: often you're scratching your head... so what the hell do I do now?) If anyone says "but you can do this", they miss the point. GIMP is far too hard to use. The help isn't very good: few clear examples, and the only way to find help on something is to know how to do it. Maybe there are good books out there, but the ones I've looked at haven't been up to much.

The good news is GIMP does work and it's better (and cheaper!) than many of the alternatives. The GUI definitely needs an overhaul.

Let me get this straight...

The gimp team are creating a network-based data gathering system to conduct a usability study.

Hello?!

How about simply asking users to report their experiences? Or even watching people use the software?

Sure, it'll involve a bit of human to human interaction but come on - its a price worth paying!

Yes, the Gimp is already a great tool but:

1. It's nowhere near Photoshop in terms of out-of-the-box functionality
2. Please, if you insist on having a separate window for everything, write a little window z-order controller that ensures the relevant windows are visible (i.e. like photoshop does)

And you want to know what peoples' screen sizes are? Here I'll save you the effort - exactly the same size as all the customers who can happily use adobe photoshop.

Probing Questions

"The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'"

Plus the biggie: "How many effing times is this a-hole gonna photoshop a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on it's head?"

Will this really help usability?

Looking at the statistics given on ingimp's site, most of these give quantitative data - the number of times a command was used, image sizes, monitor resolutions, OS, etc. The "activity tag" data at least gives an idea of what a user is using GIMP for, but I'm not seeing it being tied to the commands used for that particular activity. I can only see this being mostly useful for determining who your users are and what they are doing, but from there these should be turned into personae that can be used for actual usability testing to help find usability flaws. Take these activities and find someone to try to do them, have them speak their thoughts out loud, and then see where the real usability flaws are.

Multiple windows and different window managers

I never understood why people keep complaining about the GIMPs multiple windows. Yes, it's weird if you've only ever used Windows apps (or apps pretending to be Windows apps). But personally I *like* mutliple windows. It means I can squirrel away functionality that I don't care about and bring it back easily. I arrange my windows on the screen the way *I* want and I use the window shade functionality of my window manager extensively. I'm *happy* with mulitple windows and multiple menus.

Well... usually. You see, I had occasion to use the GIMP under Windows the other day. And I couldn't use a damn thing. #$%!ing windows poping up all over the place. Couldn't iconify and uniconfy things the way I wanted to. And to top everything off, I'm clicking to focus every bleeding window every 3 seconds. Talk about frustrating.

Sersiously. I *hate* single window apps with a passion; big bloat-creatures with functionality jumbled all over everywhere. But I can understand why some people positively can not put up with multiple windows. As a developer, I personally think the flaw lies in the window manager (or the fact that you can't choose your window manager). But as a user that needs to get things done, I understand the point.

It would be nice to be able to have 2 modes for the GIMP. One for each kind of user.

BTW, I'm thinking of moving over to a tiling window manager... I expect I'll want something even different then.

Everyone knows what the problem is

Ingimp will not change this fact. The devs simply disagree whether it counts as a 'problem'. I don't think it's any secret that the majority of the people who come to The GIMP, especially those with a Photoshop background, simply can't grok the UI. And there's no denying that The GIMP's UI deviates from almost every other application's model out there. In fact, the only similar one I can think of is xv; hardly stuff for newbies.

This study perpetuates that denial: the people who give up on GIMP do so almost immediately. It's not just a Photoshop background that ruins it for you-- it's prior experience with Windows or the MacOS. The GIMP is simply too different. What useful information are you going to gain from people who give up immediately? Or if they spend all their time looking in menus having to do with color-- how will you know that they need a specific color model without them being able to tell you?

Now it may be that for people with no prior experience with the above mentioned programs, or for those who are willing to spend the time to learn The GIMP's unique way of doing things, then maybe The GIMP really is the best way to edit images. But, as Eric Raymond has pointed out-- sometimes it's not enough to be "the best"; the cost of switching also has to outweigh the cost of learning a new way of doing things. Considering that Photoshop falls into the "extremely expensive software" category, what does this say about The GIMP when The GIMP is free of charge? If what the devs really want is for people to flock to The GIMP en masse, then they need to pull their heads out of the sand: The GIMP UI is a problem. Otherwise, we can safely put The GIMP into the category of extremely useful (and even revolutionary) but oddball software out there like Plan 9, TEX, emacs, and so on. It'll continue to be used rather successfully by a vocal minority, but it won't be the standard.

The UI is not the Major Problem

The UI isn't the main problem with GIMP. You can teach a person who is willing to learn to use a new app if they are willing to learn and the management is persistent enough.

The problem with GIMP lies however on its speed when working with a larger picture. When an extremely detailed picture is used, GIMP doesn't work as well as Photoshop in terms of speed. With the same computer and same large picture, it takes ages in GIMP to move around or do anything, whereas it is a breeze in Photoshop. Now that is a frustrating experience that would cause people to migrate back to commercial programs.

hah...I love Gimp

I personally love Gimp's interface. What I can't STAND is Photoshop's. Takes me forever to find the shit I want on that piece of junk.

Advanced interfaces/the interface of the future.

Usability, gui, cli, and the stand alone keyboard and mouse.

The problem with program/application usability is the inflexible default program/application interface.

I have been working on the wasted repetitive hand movement from keyboard to mouse for the last three years. I have solved this problem with an advanced integrated keyboard mouse.

I have total control of the on screen interface and can point, click, type, and scroll in any order simultaneously and instantly without taking my fingers off the home row, and have not lost any of the performance or speed of a stand alone mouse.

With an integrated keyboard mouse, the debate between the gui and cli is a non-issue to me. I can use gui or cli on the same interface equally with no performance loss.

The problem between gui and cli was the stand alone keyboard and mouse. When you integrate the keyboard and mouse, you can integrate the gui and cli with big performance gains.

I have the same performance as if I had two hands on the keyboard and a third hand on the mouse.

I dominate current gui and cli users, because I have equally access to both gui and cli.

I can work, so far, across four 19" screens at will.

I am now working on an advanced interface that is fully customizable by the user that sits on top of all applications. It integrates gui, cli, and search.

We all work differently. We each need a personal interface. That is my goal, to have a fully customizable interface that sits on top of all applications.

I hope to provide my keyboard to financial traders and the military first, because of their need for microsecond input and control.

I hope to present my research and development on advanced input, interface, and interaction technology to a HCI or ACM conference for requirements for my PhD in advanced HCI.

from the "father of the perfect keyboard"

Suggestion

One thing that bothers me about gimp and other graphic software is the fricken "feature bath". I've used many options/features before but forgot where it was. Perhaps have a wild-card search of options with the ability for one to put in their own supplimental keywords. Menus have outlived their usefulness for feature-rich software.

Wrong aproach!

The first principle for any application that has a non-specialized user base is that it must be intuitively usuable.

From the blurb: "The project hopes to answer questions such as 'What is the typical monitor resolution of a GIMP user?' and 'Is the GIMP used primarily for photo editing or drawing?'""
This does not give any pertinent information on making obvious actions available in the UI.

The above two 'questions' are nonsensical: they refer to functional areas/modules/settings that should be choices offered by the UI.
Once that choice is made the UI should allow immediate, intuitively obvious actions for that choice.

The (to call a spade a spade) stupid UI currently offered by the GIMP made me drop it, and revert to simple easy, obvious bitmap editors.

A simpler way of getting usability flaws

Sit various graphics designers, novices, casual users, expert users in front of GIMP and listen to what they say. I guarantee that you will come away with hundreds of comments.

GIMP has fundamental usability issues which have festered for years. I've had the odd rant about GIMP going back years and most of the issues are still there. They really should stop feature development and make the next major release all about cleaning up the existing functionality. Despite the atrocious UI, the GIMP is an amazingly powerful tool. It's just frustrating to use, and IMHO the effort and time currently required to use it is probably DOUBLE what it could be if it were cleaned up.

Why do that? use common sense to fix it.

And common sense says:

1) use an MDI interface.
2) group similar functions together.
3) use better and more informative icons.
4) follow the new/open/close/save/cut/copy/paste paradigm that everyone else uses.
5) use the right click as a contextual menu.

etc

No need to instrument the program, just go ahead and do it as a regular application.

What i find funny

Open any book about usability. On the first pages you'd come across the axiom to avoid creating a menu structure which is more than two levels deep. Gimp's menu structure on the other hand is deeply nested. There are so many basic usability problems which could be easily corrected without using any special software.

Batch Operations

Got a digital camera? Want to resize and sharpen a chip full of images for web? Tried that with Gimp? Without Lisp knowledge?

With Irfanview it's something like select images and do operation on the images. With an off-the-shelf Gimp it's not possible.

see: Bug 173066 - Feature Request: Batch-Processor [gnome.org]

CTRL+K = Delete

My least favorite thing about the GIMP is that Ctrl+K is delete, not Delete.

Re:GIMP will always be a gimp

Or they could just call it GIMPshop [wikipedia.org]....

Re:GIMP will always be a gimp

You can put lipstick on a pig but in the end, you still have a pig.

Re:GIMP will always be a gimp

You can put lipstick on a pig but in the end, you still have a pig.

... and that pig will be the object of thousands of zoophiles' hot fantasies! Wait - what were we talking about...?

Re:The awfulness of Photoshop

Yes, there seriously is. The big areas where I love Photoshop and hate Gimp revolve around layer properties, layer blending, transparent backgrounds, and grouping and copying layers.

Re:The awfulness of Photoshop

I for one complain about the gimp. I have tried many times to use it, and have yet to even manage to open a file with the gimp.

All I want to do is open a file, rotate it to correct for poor placement in the scanner, and then fix the gamma a bit and maybe crop it... then save the results.

Not demanding, but last time I tried there was no viable help, and no hint as to how to do any of this.

As for MDI, its not a problem. I am OK with MDI, not that I specially like it, My problem is "where the *&%$ are the controls?"

Re:Double standard.

With the OSS version, you know exactly what data is being collected and where it is being sent. And, we make it all available for anyone to analyze, so you know who can potentially see it and make use of it. These are typically all unknowns with closed source software.

Michael Terry

Re:The awfulness of Photoshop

Why do people so often complain about GIMP's UI, and not about the fucking awful user interface of Photoshop(TM)?

I totally agree, as a casual user, I actually find GIMP easier than Photoshop. However, as I noted above I'm not letting GIMP off that easy, IMO it's not competing against Photoshop(do Pros use GIMP?), for me, it's competing against the likes of Paint Shop Pro (and other mid range image manipulation packages), which is a hundred times easier to use than either.

Re:Where is it sending my data?

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised no one is talking about privacy, either.

But then again, we are very upfront about what data we collect and the ways your privacy could be affected. And... you can always inspect the source code if you have any privacy concerns.

Michael Terry

Re:GIMP will always be a gimp

"They should start over and model it after photoshop. The could call it photoshoppe."

One man's 'off-topic' is antoher's 'insightful'.

Better yet...

..at least for those of us using Windows XP or (shudder) Vista:
Paint.NET [getpaint.net] is getting better and better (and has an active user community creating plugins, etc). I tried it about 2 years ago and wasn't all that impressed, but as of my latest inspection, it's pretty useful software. Just make sure to check out the forums for effects and tutorials.