With every new pc a person reaches for that drive that just has it all, but recently with my new one I decided to just not repeat the same 'ol process.
From ShareX and utility tools, all of which I easily just downloaded the fresh versions including docker for development and the biggy GIMP and INKSCAPE for design.
I am only not familiar with GIMP and INKSCAPE, but I decided instead of needing to crack Photoshop and Corel again which is easy enough with trustee torrents I just don't care for the upgrade hassle.
At first glance GIMP as you can see in the screenshot looks like your grannies worspace, or you know that person that closes browsers completely to close a tab.
It is not very nice generally speaking, the next thing that bugged me right off the bat was not being able to multi select layers.
Now it might just be that I am stupid but it seems like ctrl+click is universal language for select multiple. So in millennial speak, wtf.
Other than that I accept that I won't know the shortcuts but then again it seemed silly that simple things like duplicate layer or transform did not have quick shortcuts that I could see.
Now I used both GIMP and INKSCAPE for a little muck around editing, for one I prefer vector tools for complex shapes or things I just want to be able to move about and INKSCAPE did very well and I am happy to see that they have adopted coreldraws unified single page multi object philosophy.
I think I recall them sucking on the Adobe teet with their everything is a layer idea, which is idiotic in a vector and layout software.
No Photoshop is not a layout software I don't care what you say, if you want to do layout in it then fine but I prefer my sanity thank you.
So as a simple getting used to the controls experiment I spent a bit of time drawing some basic items and trying masking and clipping, the latter which makes no sense and should just be removed but alas I am learning.
Yeah that is all I made, gotta start simple.
That I then slapped onto another picture in GIMP to then composite the two and maybe I figured draw some stuffs in GIMP but I mainly just fiddled with duplication, grouping, masking and filters.
Woman on mud path: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-standing-in-pathway-744912/
So after fiddling lazily brushing things here and there and really just slowly learning how GIMP handles filter and tool settings, I decided that I was not in the mood for any multi image nonsense and just continued stacking modified layers as required.
I think my biggest grudge really is just some of the clunky ways to adjust settings on things, shortcuts I will learn in the end and some optimization can be done in how GIMP renders some blending modes like burn etc.
Another thing I will need to get used to again is a semi non-destructive editing workflow, in Photoshop I have almost completely removed destructive editing for many things like gradients and using smart filters.
In GIMP it is back to layer stacking but overall I think I will figure out the tools well enough to at least not feel constricted.
