The GIMP at a crossroads

Speaking personally, Gimp leaves me wanting to go back to Photoshop. The proof that closed source software is just as important to me as Open Source is drawn very clearly here in the virtual sand. In this article from NewsForge, we learn that Gimp is in fact at a cross roads and also could use a serious UI overhaul. Then again, many people love this program and I am sure I will receive a lot of email reminding me of this fact. ;o)

A critical point for Adobe developers arrived a few years back during the Web boom period. The company had to choose whether to continue developing Photoshop as an all-in-one graphic tool supporting both publishing and Web development, or create a separate Web graphics editor for Web graphic creation. It chose to spin off ImageReady for Web development and GIF animation and keep Photoshop for desktop publishing. Now the GIMP, the open source answer to Photoshop, faces the same decision.

Now is the time to consider splitting up the program. Today the GIMP needs a new graphical user interface that is compatible with current standards, while at the same time the open source community needs a separate tool for publishing and Web design.

A few weeks back, I wrote an article arguing for the establishment of a common user interface standard among three products — the GIMP, Scribus, and Inkscape — in order to create an ensemble of products that could make a serious impact on the market. The feedback I received from readers and from professional graphic artists confirmed that one of the most serious obstacles in the way of collaboratively developing the aforementioned products is the odd layout of the GIMP, a feature-rich and well-loved bitmap editor of the open source community. Everyone acknowledged the great work GIMP developers have put into the product, but the fact has remained that GIMP’s current interface defies the most basic rules of human-computer interaction standards. (Those who are interested in what these rules are, read the excellent article The First Principle of Interaction Design by Bruce Tognazzini. GNOME’s Human Interface Guidelines are also a great source of information. More research papers on interface design can be found on Alias and Bill Buxton’s Web site.)