Some things never change

As relevant now as it was 10 years ago
- Oh so this is not a photoediting class I thought. So I launched Krita. And everyone laughed when they realized Photoshop was the wrong tool for the job.
  We had icecream.
- GIMP... GIMP never changes...
- I've seen this exact image in a thread before and the circlejerk assured everyone this didn't happen

It's among the next 3 things on the list. You can expect it in gimp 3.1.0 in 2056
- 400 years from now, we will have interstellar ships but we still won't have a shape tool for GIMP :(
  
  "Can you isolate the alien from the background?"
  "No"

Non-destructive editing was way, way more important. Shapes can be done differently anyway.

Typical "we know this feature is asked many times, but it not on our priority/ it is not planned"
I’m not criticizing open source itself, but I think this highlights a common issue in open source software, one that distinguishes widely adopted projects like Blender from others. Successful open source software tends to reach users beyond just those within the open source movement.
I know some might disagree, saying that these developers work for free, but that’s not the point here. Software is created for users, and if a developer declines to implement a feature requested by the user base, many will simply return to proprietary alternatives—like Adobe Photoshop or Photo Pea, in this case. This leaves these open source projects feeling like “second-class citizens” because they lack the specific features users need.
- Agree. Similar example is Matrix Element multi-account request. It's the most requested but we still don't know it's roadmap.
  
  That one is infuriating. Having a good client is so key to adoption... And Element is still really, really bad. Yes, it has almost all the features, but refusing multi-account is so so so annoying, and being Electron garbage is horrible. They have so much funding it's ridiculous.
  XMPP is another case where adoption has mostly failed exactly because there are no "flagship" clients that do it all.
  That's why DeltaChat looks so good. The official clients work great everywhere, and they can do it all!
  
  don't even dream about it. I remember reading on their issue tracker one if them saying that such a feature needs to be accounted for from the beginning of planning an app. if you think about it, it makes sense. but I doubt anything has been done about it
- Tbf this is not exclusive to open source software. iOS famously didn't have "copy and paste" until version 3, for instance. The zealots were the ones that insisted that it was unnecessary until Apple rolled it out.
  Plex constantly has requests for obvious features that are stated to not be on their roadmap.
  Yes it is frustrating, but it isn't exclusive to open source development.
  
  Lmfao unlocked a memory with this one, remember when Apple tried to force people to pay for that update? You could easily find the package and manually install it instead, but still lmfao.
  
  I think the difference is that with open source you won’t lose money if the users leave. If you have creating a software that is not selling because it is missing a feature, you are incentivised to implement it.
- blender is good because they changed course and made a more industry standard ui, as requested by its users.
  gimp devs wanna do things their own way period. 3.0 is a step in the right direction, coming a decade too late.
  
  a step in the right direction
  With the confirmation buttons in dialogs moved into the title bar?
- This is literally on the road map for GIMP, right up top. (Status: no just means it hasn't been started yet and isn't planned for 3.2, not that it isn't planned) https://developer.gimp.org/core/roadmap/
- The reason shape tools don't exist yet is because they would require the implementation of non-destructive vector layers, and a fundamental overhaul of the vector back-end. More: https://developer.gimp.org/core/roadmap/#development-focus
- Very true. You can find many cases of that though. Just the other day I was trying to get crypto quotes and accounting inside Gnucash, which has been supported by the backend API's since forever ago, but the interface essentially doesn't allow for it because the developers don't consider crypto as currency, and don't want to support custom currencies or even just using the existing data source API for anything but stocks, derivatives and fiat currencies.
- The meme is ironic lol. Why would anybody want a shape tool in gimp? Nobody is seriously asking for it. This is a joke that originated with that old greentext about anon getting beat up in the school parking lot for not being able to draw a circle in gimp
  
  Every now and then, I just want a circle to start off with. A circle will capture 97% of the area I need before I grind down with the lasso. Can I draw a circle freehand? No, that shit is more like an oval or an abomination against God.
  Is it enough to get me to start paying for Photoshop? No. I've even got it installed on my work computers that have Photoshop in case of licensing issues (it's happened more than once). But I am a user and I have requested it unironically in the past.
  So, beat me up after class but the sample size is at least one.

It's so tiring...
Use the circle selection tool, mark an area, fill it with a solid colour/gradient/texture or morph it further or stroke the path to create a hollow circle
So many options that amount to more than just a shape tool.
- Unintuitive.
  I heard of photoshop when I was 13 and I installed a pirated version, just started clicking around and I always found what I wanted in a minute.
  10 Years later, I switch 100% to Linux, I have to do some light design work, I open gimp - I CLICK AROUND FOR HALF AN HOUR FOR SOMETHING SIMPLE - can't find it to save my life. Give up and google it, it gives me a reply like yours "just go to a completely unrelated menu to conjure a hack out of your ass that barely resembles what you originally intended to do".
  Fuck that UX man. I am so glad pirated photoshop works well in wine nowadays and I have a VM with a legit Adobe suite if I ever need to actually whip up my license for some reason (fuck adobe as well btw.)
  I pray that one day there is a real competitor that works natively on Linux. I pay, take my hard earned money every month, whatever it takes, just make it intuitive and reach near feature parity with PS.
  If anybody is still reading, sorry for venting, the GIMPs always trigger me, have a nice day.
  
  Try krita it has such things :D
  
  Have you tried photopea?
  
  If you want something intuitive, use Paint or pen and paper.
- So many options that amount to more than just a shape tool.
  If I wanted to learn some arcane bullshit to draw a circle Id just learn C++.
  
  Sorry best I can do is a programmable turtle that moves around as a pen.
- Same energy as "so tired of idiots who want right click>new file on gnome, are you too stupid to open the terminal, cd 20 times and use the shittiest text editor ever to create a new file and save it and then open nautilus and navigate to the same directory, or something?"
  Comparable to driving from washington to argentina instead of taking a plane (for those who don't know, there are no roads connecting north to south america). This is literally the attitude why there will never be year of the linux.
  
  Spoiler: most people don't care about "year of the linux desktop". Linux works for me and those losers on windows be damned. Why should we cater to them? Especially since they won't put any effort into learning linux.
- Wouldn't that simply create a bitmap circle, though? The advantage of shapes in Photoshop is that they are vectors.
  
  Select circle -> save selection as path. There's your vector. I'd, however, use some vector app for vector graphics, independent of the OS I'm using.
- That's several more steps than it ought to take. Including the step of having to look this up, because you'd never intuitively figure this out on your own.

i just want pressure sensitivity that actually works, GIMP used to be my go to for art stuff in the past, its a shame to see that it hasn't really improved much over the past decade. I've switched completely to Krita, better overall software
- Photoshop and gimp are both bad painting software since they are not meant for that. They just do it in a pinch. Used to main ps until I bought clip studio and discovered how damn good it is. Then I went to linux and discovered how damn good krita is.
- Krita all the way.
- I use Krita for everything, I love it so much. I also won't act like it's perfect either, despite it being my most used software by a landslide. Personally my biggest desire now is improved workflow for text editing (e.g. editing text directly on the canvas, being able to box and justify text, vector pathing for text so you can make it bend or wave). From what I understand it is something that is being worked on, and I will be even more indebted to the wonderful folks at KDE once further progress is made on that front.
- I cant switch to something else because ii am so used to transparency layers
  
  It is just such a natural feature to have when you can be dealing with blending layers that take up the entire canvas.

Its on the roadmap. AFAIK it requires vector layers before it can be worked on.

Man there's a lot of really stupid shit in here.
Yes having a simple to use shape tool is nice. And it's on the roadmap so no, it doesn't go against some weird vaguely defined "core value" of gimp.

Wrong tool for the job anyway.
GIMP and photoshop have always been photo editing tools first and foremost, which means they are meant for working with bitmap graphics, not vector.
Want to work with vector graphics? Use Inkscape.
Would you look at that: Inkscape already has very robust shape tools
Edit: before I rip my hair out: As explained elsewhere in this post, GIMP already has shape creation methods for bitmap. I assumed people were refering to PS's vector shape capabilities because... GIMP already has shape creation methods for bitmap.
Yes, it's part of the default tool set of a lot of programs that are not GIMP; don't like it? Use those programs you listed instead. Or implement it because it's FOSS. Or throw some money at the devs—who are creating something for you for free while you whinge about the things they haven't done for you—so you at least have some right to whinge.
- Yeah but sometimes you want a circle in a bitmap.
- Why does a shape tool have to mean vectors are involved?
  Why can't I just draw some bitmaps in different shapes?
  
  Like krita does?
  
  Because GIMP already can make bitmap shapes
- Wrong.
  "GIMP is a cross-platform image editor ... Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done." - gimp.org
  Shape tools is a universal basic tool for any software that handle some sort of image creation or addition.
  Photo editing, general image editing, painting software, page layout design, vector design, PDF editor, all of them have one.
  Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, Clip Studio Paint, Krita, Photopea, Pixelmator, Affinity Photo, ... all of them have shape tools.
  Heck, even Microsoft Excel and Word even have one.
  EDIT: Shape tool is planned, not yet WIP. Source: GIMP Roadmaps
  
  GIMP has shape tools like MS Paint does.
  Also, why not use those programs you listed instead, if GIMP isn't getting the job done.
  
  That moment when MS Paint is more advanced than GIMP, lol.
- This comment has such a "Wanted to do X for a laugh? We had a tool for that, it's called Y" energy, and I think that's hilarious.
  
  You can use both, you don't have to limit yourself to only one document/image manipulation program
- You're not wrong. But also, people would love shape tools in GIMP. It still feels like a really weird thing to exclude.
- For illustration work, having good support for both vector and bitmap elements is pretty damn convenient. For example, in comics, you draw the comics themselves in bitmap layers, while panels and speech bubbles go in vector layers. Having the ability to edit the speech bubbles easily is pretty neat.
  (Optimally inking/outlines would be vectors too, but most people prefer to do that with bitmap tools anyway, or vectorise later.)
  Krita actually does these pretty solidly - vector tools are there and they're pretty easy to use. In GIMP 2, the vector path support actually is there and the editable texts are actually pretty great, but it has the air of "power user trick, for those in the know" rather than something people actually discover easily. You also need to update the vector strokes manually. (Haven't tried GIMP 3 yet.) The fact that people still assume you can't do this stuff really says it all.
- Nonono, you got it all wrong. Photoshop is the one and only graphics tool, just as Word is the tool for anything text. Like layout - and wherever Word fails layouting you use Photoshop for the job. It has even more different fonts and u can use them all in one document!! Every single letter a different color and a different filter. Everything else is just not proffesional. Hahah. lolrotfl. Can your Gump do that? Thought so!
  
  Except Word has a shape tool.
- GIMP and photoshop have always been photo editing tools first and foremost
  I mean, GIMP literally means "General Image Manipulation Program".
  Excusing the lack of proper shape drawing tools as "it's a task for vector software" while at the same time having things like the ability to define vector masks is complete nonsense.
  
  I mean, GIMP literally means "General Image Manipulation Program".
  ... It stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and has done for 28 years now.
  
  It means GNU Image Manipulation Program.
  
  Where do you get that idea from? Tht G stands for GNU
  
  They could call it SIMP, for specialized image manipulation program.
  
  drawing shapes is a very much general use. 90% of the times I only open an image editor to crop and annotate an image, with shapes like boxes circles arrows. I'm not drawing in it and I highly doubt that drawing on a computer is a "general" thing.

Not gonna lie this update is great. We got TEXT OUTILINES! Do you hear that??? Finally text outlines 🥹❤️

GIMP needs a glow up. It looks like what it is, but for a program looking for artists and designers to switch - you’re not going to get it by looking like the Temu photoshop.

PHOTOPEAAAAAA
- Admittedly, I just make the occasional meme for friends, but Photopea has been a 1:1 replacement for Photoshop for me.
  
  I use it a lot because I don’t like GIMP and am too poor to pay for photoshop.
- Is this pronounced:
  Photo-PEE
  Or
  fo - TOW PIA (like a play on the words photo and utopia)
  
  No idea sorry
- I keep hearing about this thing. Does it really do all the photoshop things? adjustment layers, masks, dodge+burn, all that stuff? and I guess, does it do it well, with big files?
  
  He does a lot of things, in particular layer positioning/whatever this is called. I can't really compare with PS though, since I don't have it, but to open and do basic stuff on complex psd files that other software do not handle well, it's ok.
  No idea how large you can get with it though.
  
  It’s great for a free thing. Better then GIMP at least.
- CASIOPEA

I use GIMP only for the simple pixel stuff, and I hope they did not make basic operations even more complicated. I always struggle to get some basic things done just because there are myriads of for me useless and arcane settings.

Gimp 3.0.0 is fucking awesome, haters gonna hate.
There is already a killer plugin for Gimp 3.0.0 called "Batcher" that lets you batch edit and convert images (including pdfs) either with a GUI interface or from the command line. There are already plenty of tools that can do this from the command line, or that are commercial paid software... but this is a pretty damn powerful utility to have attached to a fully featured free and open source image editor that you could teach someone who is uncomfortable with scripting how to make a bunch of edits across a large amount of image files with.
https://github.com/kamilburda/batcher

GIMP (at least in v2) does have a vector path tool and stores the paths with the image! Thing is, they kind of work like selections and you have to explicitly stroke the paths on bitmap layers. It's a bit more complicated than necessary and not easy to grasp at first.

I use Paint.net usually and there are plugins people make that you can install. Does GIMP not have that?
- It does

lol ; silley

and that is why I always keep my receipt

I think I’m just not familiar enough with image manipulation software, but GIMP feels way too complex to even get started with…
- just start trying to do sonething with it and you'll get used to it
- I use and like Gimp, but I feel the same about inkscape. I hate svg images now because of it.
  
  yeah, I loved using ad*be illustrator back in the day but I haven't been able to understand inkscape yet

Ooh, new gimp version.

I looked up what a "shape tool" is supposed to do. How about using better tools for this, like Inkscape, export as pixel file (png or whatever), and import it into GIMP?

Also, the stupid name chosen by mid-1990s edgelords trying to be funny is still stupid.
- The GNU Image Manipulation Program is edgy to you?