Haeleth's Journal: How I tried to stop worrying and love the GIMP

I've hated GIMP for a long time, after some dreadful user experiences in the 1.x days. Recently I got tired of using VMware for all my graphics editing work, however, and as for once I have some stuff to do that doesn't require CMYK support, I decided it really was time to give free software another chance. Krita turned out to suck even worse than GIMP 1.x, so I gritted my teeth and installed the hated program once more.

I fired it up and decided to open a PNG file. I was presented with an informative dialog box: "The image has an embedded color profile: sRGB built-in. Convert the image to the RGB working profile (sRGB built-in)?"

Okay, so at least it finally has colour management support. That's good. But why is it prompting me to convert when the image profile and the working profile are apparently identical? What exactly does this decision imply? Being somewhat confused, I decided to click on the nice friendly-looking "Help" button.

Oops, looks like I forgot to install the help package. (Why does Ubuntu do this? If I'm installing an application, installing the help files too should be the default action.) So I fixed that and tried again. This time my web browser opened with the GIMP manual. So, what does it say on this subject?

"Eeek! There is missing help", screamed GIMP. "Sorry, but a help item is missing for the function you're looking for. Feel free to join us and fill the gap by writing documentation for the GIMP." It also suggests that I try looking in the online version of the help instead, and provides a handy link. Oops, no, it's a broken link.

This is not the stuff of which positive user impressions are made.

(Thanks to Google I did eventually find some documentation for the dialog box in question, which didn't actually tell me why I was being prompted to convert sRGB to sRGB, but did at least convince me it was safe to click "Convert".)

Next time: either "Mom, why can't I select multiple layers?", or "Manage your own damn windows!", depending on what annoys me most in the meantime.