Review: GIMP 2.99.14 (Libre Arts)

I like having both in one tool. I've made a lot of posters and there's always a mix of bitmap images and vector texts/designs. It would be very complicated if I had to separate the two parts of the work and do a bit in one tool, then save and open in another tool, and I'd probably have to flatten the image and remove layer info when moving between tools, so that would definitely make the task more difficult.

But actually maybe the biggest improvement is being able to select multiple objects:

https://www.gimp.org/news/2020/11/06/gimp-2-99-2-released...

There were always ways to emulate this by adapting your workflow, but this will make things easier.

I don't know which features you are referring to, but my guess is that it would be outlined text and aligning multiple objects against a reference object. These are the things the actual, real users have been longing for for a very long time.

The vaguely "UNIX way" kind of approach (do the pixel things, leave non-pixel things to other applications) doesn't stand the test of real life scenarios. Nobody who makes a living off this really wants to use a vector graphics program just to add an outlined text caption to an image. Users were forced to use hackarounds just to get this seemingly simple job done. Nobody liked that.

I'm not even exaggerating. I've met a lot of GIMP users online and offline over the past 15+ years, and not a single one said "You know, what I like about GIMP? It's how difficult it is to add a text with an outline. It's the stress of doing unnecessary extra work that makes me feel like I'm living my life to its full potential" :)

In fact, I'll tell you more. There is a strong demand for vector layers and shape drawing tools in GIMP. And it will be done eventually (and old patchset for vector layers from 2006 was recently picked up and cleaned up from bitrot).