To make things worse, the current version of OS X Gimp has a few bugs in the toolbox interface that cause the tools to randomly switch to other modes. The right window must be in focus and the editor must be in the right mode, otherwise operations either have no effect or do something unexpected. For operations that take a single click in Photoshop, I have to click three times and press a key. Working with GIMP often gives me a feeling of having to take everything out of my toolbox just to reach that single wrench I need. It has not improved in the 2.8 release, maybe even to the contrary.

The main problem however is the user interface, which has always been somewhat backwards compared to every other graphics editor. It has some very powerful tools that are not even available in other programs. Use 2.8.14p1 instead.Īs far as free bitmap-based graphics editors go, GIMP is probably the best. Note: version 2.8.14p2 is pretty much unusable, it crashes about 50% of the time when opening an image (this includes effects that spawn new image windows), and it also sometimes crashes while trying to save. It's a powerful graphics tool that is available for free on multiple platforms. GIMP's developers never claimed it was a drop-in clone of Photoshop or any other commercial application. It's not fair to expect one program to work just like another, unless the second program specifically claims to do that. GIMP has its own interface paradigm, as do other complex programs like Blender, and you have to learn *GIMP* as it was meant to work. With regard to the reviews criticizing GIMP for not being easy to use, I think those people are expecting it to work like Photoshop or other applications. My reason for this is that installing your port is extremely easy, so in this context I interpret the 'ease' category relating to the port and packaging and not to the application itself. I'm giving your port 5 stars, although GIMP itself would get only 4 stars for 'ease of use'. Thank you so much for your efforts in porting this and maintaining it so conscientiously on a continuing basis! This is an excellent and reliable port of GIMP to OSX.

Gimp mac os x