Whenever I talk to people because do not they move to GNU / Linux always appears the same reason. Is that there is no Photoshop! I always recommend to use the GIMP, but always they say it’s an application with which you can make acceptable designs but not professional. Another of the complaints about GIMP is always that the interface is not intuitive.

In this post I’m going to show a personal vision of this fantastic open source project and my personal contributions in order to improve the user experience with the application.If most people say that the interface is not intuitive may be for two reasons. The first could be because they are used to work with another product, in this case Photoshop. The second is simply because the interface of our software is not intuitive.

For this reason the interface:

• It has to do always what the user expects and do something you to easily associate
• To reache the maximum of options at the minimum of clicks. Prioritizing the options with their usefulness.
• I has to be visually pleasing and productive

I’ve created a mockup of the application in my head:

The list below is my favourite set of aspects to improve GIMP. The great majority of this ideas are mine, the rest are contributions to GIMP UI Brainstorm. When we improve our software we must never fall into the mistake of copying the options that exist in professional products. We need to discuss ideas / suggestions of people to be better than our competitors.

Adaptive Panels

The most important part in the user’s experience with an application is the interface. Historically there is a discussion of whether the GIMP interface has to follow a model MDI or not.

As far as can be seen in the mockup I prefer the MDI interface, but I accept all opinions. I believe that GIMP would have to be able to satisfy everyone. Any program will have to get the maximum space available on the user’s screen.

I think that we could choose in the preferences if we prefer one o other options. A MDI interface with a main window where you edit the document with optional floating panels is the best choice.

I propose an idea to maximize the chances of panels of GIMP, and avoid the most of the odious scrollbars. The idea is to create panels that adapt themself to any distribution.

In the following images we see the same panel in vertical and horizontal layout. Each sub-section is distributed in the best way. They are floating inside their parent panel.

Clean layout

It is necessary to do a restructuring of the panels in GIMP. My idea is that the panels can be grouped by functionality and can be recognized easily by their icons. This can be done now already but it would be interesting to a more compact form. At the level of usability, as shown in the picture, you could associate the color of the icons with the state panel. If the panel is visible then it has full color. If the panel is hidden then the icon is in a gray scale. It also would have to be able to choose if wewant to see the label of the tab or not.

Another option to choose for this distribution is if we want to swap the panels between them, or a attach.

For each of the sub-panels would be interesting to have the option to minimize or not the panel, for a quick management.All these ideas for managing panels does not conflict with the discussion of whether the interface has to be MDI or not. There is a possible version of the panels previously commented for the two versions. The only difference is really where the dock is made of these panels.

Navigation Panel

The new navigation panel would have to be remodeled to be more practical and intuitive. The progress bar could have some points that can be easily found, for example at 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%. There would also have to field a textbox to enter the zoom level manually.

Radial Tool

There has been much discussions about a possible radial tool which you can add the tools that are commonly used. In my opinion would be a great step forward for Gimp, which have not the competitors. The best implementation found is in jdc blog.

Folder SlideShow

I have always miss a panel to navigate through all the images in my computer. Might be managing the images that are working.

History Color

I hate to lose a color used previously. The truth is that I could create a simple palette but we could create a history of colors used like the image.

Working Buffers

You’ll find a fabulous panel with miniatures of the working documents, a single click away!

Magnetic Lines

Imagine if we could define a set of magnetic lines which the layers, objects or selections may attach. Usefull for define common regions in the document.

Selection Tool Improved

Gimp has one of the best tools to select, but there is always a chance for improvement. There will be a new area of selection that will lead to expanding the selection to the edge magnetic or nearest to the edge of the canvas.

Blocked Points in Scale Tool

The tool for scaling it could add control points to determine which parts of the selection will have to expand and which do not. Imagine you have the following image and we want to resize but without increasing the edges. An example:

Layer Tagging

One of the oldest requests to the GIMP developers is the ability to create folders to organize the layers which they are working. I propose another option that would be to tag the layers. This way you could work more efficiently and apply filters or change the visibility of all those who match a pattern.

Plugin Repository

The concept of a repository of addons is in so many applications. We could apply it to GIMP and we could add plugins, filters from the same application.

Welcome Panel

It would be very useful if in the main screen appears a list of recent documents. From this panel might be to create new documents with the most regular user’s settings.

PD: Sorry about my English mistakes and thanks to Gimp Ui Brainstorm Team

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