The GIMP interface still looks as dated as ever. The good news is that it’s more responsive, thanks to a rebuild of the underlying code on the GTK3 UI framework. All the same panels, menus, and buttons are still present. Here’s the previous user interface:
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
And here’s the updated one:
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
It’s functional and not wildly dissimilar from Photoshop in its basic layout. A toolbox on the left has Move, Crop, Select, and Paintbrush tools, while tool options are below them (they appear across the top in Photoshop). A menu runs across the top, while panels for brushes, layers, and other features are located on the right side. There are no Hand or Pointer tools, however, which may throw off Photoshop converts.
You can customize the interface colors with themes. The first thing most people will want to do is change from the glaring Light mode to the Dark theme so that photos and images take center stage. Even though I prefer to work in the Dark theme, one problem is that the black text in menus is difficult to read. You can further customize the app by toggling panels.
Support for high-DPI displays is supposed to be one of the big new changes with the latest version, but menus and panels were still initially tiny on one of my test systems. On another PC with a 4K monitor, the interface elements were readable.
The welcome panel’s Personalize section offers font and icon scaling options to help you resize those elements. Previously, you had to locate and edit configuration files to achieve the same result. Photoshop has just two size options, suitable for HD and 4K displays, which are good but not great for in-between QHD monitors. Fellow FOSS software RawTherapee lets you set the interface font size.
The layout is highly configurable, but I miss Photoshop’s workspaces, which let you set the interface based on activities such as drawing or photo editing. GIMP allows you to save your panel layout, but switching among layouts is not as easy as in Photoshop. To display the desired panels in the interface, navigate to the Windows > Dockable Dialogs option.
(Credit: GIMP/PCMag)
As the word “dockable” implies, you can also undock these panels. From here, I turned on the Gradients panel, which provided me with some lovely presets to choose from after I had floundered with simply trying the Gradient tool from the left toolbar. In Photoshop, you get well-designed presets from the top toolbar automatically when you choose the Gradient tool—no hunting through menus required.
I appreciate that GIMP has tooltips that explain interface items when you hover the mouse over them, and that you get context-sensitive help by pointing at an item on-screen or tapping F1. The program supports a large number of keyboard shortcuts, and you can even create custom ones. A final small interface touch that I appreciate is that the image you’re working on appears in the program’s taskbar icon.
