As an occasional user, no I can't get over it. I choose the wrong action every time! It's a non-standard way of saving an image, and it's a usability fail.
Since GIMP 2.8 came out 5 years ago and you still haven't got used to it, you must have been using it very occasionally, so hopefully it didn't waste too much of your time. However it's a big win for people who use any non-trivial features of GIMP which can't be "saved" in an ordinary image format. Pretty much every professional media software uses this workflow. You can't "Save As" .mp4 in Sony Vegas, you can only save your project as .veg, a file format which only Sony Vegas can open. Otherwise all your hard work will be lost.
Or he just hasn't upgraded -- I know I haven't. But, you're right. I've mostly moved on to other tools. If I'm using GIMP to edit something, the source file is never going to be XCF. Sorry guys, nobody uses XCF and pros don't use GIMP. A big win for professional users would be CMYK support, not the inability to save non-XCF files.
Let's face it. Chasing non-existent professional users at the expense of your actual user base is pretty darn lousy UX.
There are so many misconceptions in this post, I have to wonder if this isn't some sort of an elaborate troll.
>If I'm using GIMP to edit something, the source file is never going to be XCF.
What makes you think the source file can only be XCF? You can easily open any image format with GIMP.
>Sorry guys, nobody uses XCF and pros don't use GIMP.
Wrong and wrong. XCF is necessary to save your work in GIMP, so most GIMP users use it.
>A big win for professional users would be CMYK support,
Who the hell needs CMYK support these days? Print is dead (well, it's getting there anyway).
>not the inability to save non-XCF files.
You can easily export your project to any image format that exists.
>Chasing non-existent professional users at the expense of your actual user base is pretty darn lousy UX.
The tool should be optimized for people who spend the most time using the tool. GIMP is for long edits, where saving (actually saving) your intermediate progress is a part of the workflow, whether you're a hobbyist or pro. For quick edits there is Pinta and whatever else.
> What makes you think the source file can only be XCF? You can easily open any image format with GIMP.
Nothing. But if I'm opening a not-XCF I probably don't want to SAVE it as an XCF.
> Wrong and wrong. XCF is necessary to save your work in GIMP, so most GIMP users use it.
So basically the only reason anyone uses XCF is that GIMP forces them to? That's some sound design logic there. Used to be you could save your work in not-XCF.
> Who the hell needs CMYK support these days? Print is dead (well, it's getting there anyway).
The professional users GIMP is chasing after.
> You can easily export your project to any image format that exists.
Would be easier to save.
> The tool should be optimized for people who spend the most time using the tool.
So chasing after the non-existent professional GIMP users would be a bad optimization then? Ok.
> GIMP is for long edits, where saving (actually saving) your intermediate progress is a part of the workflow, whether you're a hobbyist or pro.
You know, I'd love to find an open source alternative to Lightroom and Photoshop. Turns out things like darktable and GIMP are far more archaic. That's the reason I still buy and use the Adobe tools. Dicking about with the one workflow where GIMP actually works is a poor move and doesn't do anything beneficial for more involved workflows.
