sigh - this might sound tough to say, but, I’m not ready to give Blender another shot.

I’m hardly ready to give Gimp another shot - I doubt, at this point, either of these releases will phase me or my use - I’ve simply been too disappointed with them both for more than 15 years of trying every new version, that they would probably literally need a new name to get me to use them.

I get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about Gimp or Blender - I unfortunately only have terrible memories of frustratingly trying to do basic tasks like make a selection or move an object around, to the point where I hear the word ‘Blender’ like I’d hear the word ‘Wasp’ - a little cringe of bad memories and something to be avoided.

I think it’s been almost 18 years of trying Gimp on a yearly basis on multiple platforms only to be baffled how rudimentary user-level functions are so fundamentally broken.

It must sound like I’m really bashing this software, and I’m not - I am appreciative of everyone who puts an effort into the important and often thankless work of FOSS - but part of the point of the FOSS movement is to demonstrate its feasibility to replace the equivalent paid software. This is also critical to its growth, evolution, and support. Firefox, VLC, and, to an extent, OpenOffice, have achieved this tremendously.

Due to the overwhelming complexity of the tasks it sets to achieve, Blender’s usability atrocities can be pushed aside. Not so with Gimp.

OpenOffice, for example, is somewhere in the middle, but both ways - the functionality and the UI/UX are both ‘good enough’, and I can hand it to my Grandma instead of Word and she will hardly notice.

I think the major point for me here, is that this is why there’s an age old saying that FOSS is made by geeks, for geeks, and we will never have ‘the year of Linux’.

That’s because usability these days is basically on par with functionality, because with so many frameworks and software options available, even if something half-works - people will still prefer the half working, usable thing, to something that works great and literally seems to change its mind on what function does what depending on some extremely random-seeming context.

Photoshop’s UI/UX is shit to start. I’ve often stated it’s a piece of software you must have someone basically show you the first time how to use - then it’s okay. That we have only this to really compare Gimp’s state of awfulness to, indicates, unfortunately, the depth of the shithole Gimp’s UX is really in.

I’m a UI/UX dev, and I find these pieces of software unusable, and, perhaps especially due to my education on the subject, actively frustrating to try to use - I pray to think what would happen if I gave, let’s say, my girlfriend, who does Photography and Graphic design, a copy of Gimp to replace Photoshop. She’d probably leave me for even putting her through the experience. /s

Again, though, OpenOffice vs. Word? No problem.

tl;dr:
Usability has to go hand in hand with functionality in development, or there is a risk in the brand simply becoming a ‘bad name.’

If Gimp 3 might actually be usable, I’d personally go for a name change. I see people in IT visibly cringe when I mention it.