I was going to say that 3.0 updated the UI, but I’ve honestly found it worse than the previous at almost every turn. I think the only thing I noticed is an ungodly amount of padding around everything now, wasting a ton of screen space and ruining the layout of plugin design.

If they were to redesign their UI properly, it would take literal years of development time which is incredibly expensive to fund. The reason Blender was able to do this is everyone from high schoolers to industry specialists were able to use it, so it got tons of contributions, both in code and funding.

GIMP has always fallen in the middle zone. Too daunting for beginners and too cumbersome for professionals. Great for most basic stuff, but once you have a serious project in mind, it quickly starts to show its faults.

Where it shines imho is its robust and approachable scripting language via Python. You can approach batch processing like nothing else I’ve used and without decades of image processing knowledge. You just learn the correct inputs for the native tools, then script that with variables in a surprisingly readable syntax. But that’s for an even more niche audience.

I mean, GIMP 3.0 was already a larger rework last year. And they had that in the making for 7 years...

They did. Though you may be too young to remember. 👨‍🦳 Unfortunately the problem is unless they completely ape a more popular product. Many will still be unhappy. People still complain about blender as well.

That isn't to say the UI still couldn't use more Polish and decluttering. But with what money and who's time? I think that's the bigger issue. I know there are soft forks that imitate adobe. They could pull that into the main branch perhaps unless there's a licensing conflict. But who's to say adobe is right, not just familiar.

Honestly I think GIMP being it's own thing is fine. But here's the thing. UI/UX is much easier to participate in open source as a non coder. Look at the toolkit they are using. GTK 3 IIRC, and try to do a design based off that. There may even be a GUI builder like with QT. Where you could even define the GUI in a GUI, to make code for them. Or perhaps something basic like tool icon redesign.

Point is. While a lot of coders like to code in their free time. Or at least on tools they use. UX/UI or graphic designers are actually scarce comparatively in the space.

I made my own GIMP themes and am happy with how it looks now. Dark and middle grey if anyone is interested. I have clients looking over my shoulder every week and no one has even asked what I'm using.

Been using both Photoshop and GIMP for professional reproduction work for years and both have their pros and cons in terms of their behaviour and layout.

Having taken some time to learn GIMP (which I also had to do once upon a time with Photoshop btw), I personally don't see it as a big priority for them to work on the UI/UX.

Yes a few things could benefit from a tweak, but I don't think it needs an overhaul.

I can only assume it's because the people in charge of the project don't want to.