We reckon itll take about a month of occasional use to become competent and relaxed enough to actually enjoy using GIMP.

And if you can do that then, bugs and lacklustre performance set aside, GIMP can become an incredibly powerful bit of software.

This is true of many open-source applications, of which GIMP is one, and it certainly feels more at home on something like Linux.

On macOS it looks alien and its interface feels overly complicated.

GIMP recreates many of the tools found in Photoshop, but the developers behind GIMP see absolutely no reason to mirror Photoshops way of doing things.

As an open-source project, GIMP hasnt any desire to pretend to be commercial software.

In Photoshop you would use any of the selection tools, then switch to the Move tool, and then drag.

GIMPs help file explains a selection layer is a type of temporary layer which is similar in function to a normal layer, except that before you can resume working on any other layers in the image, a floating selection must be anchored.

In terms of brush-style tools youll find a heal tool, for example, although this requires you to Cmdclick to define an origin point from which a sample can be taken (yes, there is also a clone tool that works in the same way).

Its just that you might have to hunt to find it, and then will probably have to train yourself to use it when you do.

Applying filters like a blur to an image take several seconds to complete, for example.

Sometimes it can seem like GIMP has crashed, especially when tweaking settings in dialog boxes.

In reality the app is just working and the interface has become unresponsive while it does so.

However, this performance is much better than the last time we reviewed GIMP, when it was simply unacceptable and rendered GIMP virtually useless.

At least now GIMP is a usable app, albeit potentially frustrating if you hate waiting around.

Selecting presets in some dialog boxes caused their name not to appear, although the preset was indeed selected.

This is confusing although something its arguably possible to live with.

Additionally, clicking the OK button in some dialogs did nothing although hitting Enter was sufficient to click them.

These kind of bugs are commonplace in open source software, unfortunately, especially those apps ported from another platform.

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