Manually adding alpha channels to layers… I’ve seen so many people knock their heads against GIMP because, for whatever reason, they didn’t just add the channel by default. (Okay, sure it’s probably the default if you’re starting with a blank file but the background layer doesn’t have one and if you start by opening a jpg, then subsequent layers won’t have alpha because… reasons…)

I don’t think it’s because they don’t have UX designers, it’s because they only solicit feedback from existing users rather than researching new user experience and watching how a new user gets on with the program.

I also think very few Adobe or Affinity power users get stuck into GIMP etc because they bounce off it so quickly. So they never get feedback from the very users they want to convince to move over.

[–] Moss_the_TeXie@rheinneckar.social 8 points 13 hours ago

@fartsparkles
Being a very occasional Affinity (and former Adobe) user, I wholeheartedly agree with the last paragraph. GIMP’s UI is simply repulsive. Well, most surfaces of *nix GUI software are (ahem) idiosyncratic, but this is in a category of its own.

@simplejack

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Because JPEG images don't have alpha transparency

Of course, my problem is that I am familiar with too many technical details

[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 11 points 13 hours ago

Oh, I know (I am a greying wizard), but why should the editor care? In theory, it should assume XCF, with the opened JPEG as the first layer.

Instead, it’s gotchas and RTFM. Which is sadly a very poor approach when developing a tool used by creatives who are vastly less likely to RTFM than the engineers making the tool.