linuxmemes

a platform that enables designers to relatively easily contribute to open source projects without learning git

Reading this made me a bit sad.
On the one hand, I understand how tools like this could be a hurdle for someone who isn't heavily invested in their use. And on the other, as someone who has tinkered with open source projects, I know that as hurdles go, git is the first of very many hurdles that must be cleared when contributing to a large, mature GUI program like this, and it's a pretty low one at that.

It would be great if more people could contribute to and help develop open-source versions of tools they themselves use, but I can certainly see how tough it can be starting out

Honestly just copying everything from 10 years ago 1:1 would be an improvement on most big applications.

Open source software design sucks because they don't have desginers (who know git) because they can't attract designers (who know git) because they don't have money (free and open source) because they don't have big userbase (which can lead to more people donating) because oss software design sucks.

The UI was overhauled in the 3.0 update on March. The new documentation says changing brush size is fairly easy: https://testing.docs.gimp.org/3.0/tr/gimp-using-variable-size-brush.html

All brushes have a variable size that can be changed.

You can change the brush size in several ways:

• By using the default shortcut keys for changing a tool's size:

  • Decrease size by 1: [

  • Increase size by 1: ]

  • Decrease size by 10: {

  • Increase size by 10: }

• By using the default mouse scrollwheel actions for changing a tool's size:

  • Decrease size by 1: Ctrl+Alt+Scrollwheel Down

  • Increase size by 1: Ctrl+Alt+Scrollwheel Up

I love krita and it is the best digital art software i've used for painting and i've used them all proffessionally. I had to tweak it the least out of all of them.

A great remedy to stuff being hard to find is that you can press the slash key / to open a command palette

And fuck ISO for charging so much for access to them.

No everything in Linux has to be used through the terminal, how else will I feel elite. If there has to be a gui let's make sure it looks like it was designed in 1995, so everyone hates it and just uses the terminal instead

To give a specific example of how powerful Blender is, in geology there are very very very very expensive 3d modelling programs and then there is like... Sketchup which I guess Google hasn't abandoned? idk... even the basic GIS software for geologic mapping from ESRI is expensive AF, especially if you want to do any fancy 3d rendering or map making.

Enter this guy

You already know this guy is cool as fuck just from that photo, but let me tell you how exactly how lowkey cool Marcus Schwander is.

(btw I have zero connection to this guy, I know next to nothing about him, I literally just found his videos from searching "Blender Geology" on youtube randomly)

His video series shows quite clearly and exhaustively how to do extremely complicated geologic mapping of complex fold belts with lots of faults using Blender. What I can't stress enough is that the workflow he is detailing in the proprietary software world would be EXTREMELY niche, require exhaustive licensing and setting up payment and getting software keys.... blah blah blah and ultimately it would be a very expensive workflow, possibly requiring software licenses that cost thousands of dollars or more (I am not kidding). On top of the prohibitive cost, any kind of documentation, additional plugin development, or content creators who make tutorials about how to use the tools is an order of magnitude rarer for those tools because access to the tools in the first place is so prohibitive (and is usually only along narrow circumstances, not the kind of situation someone would organically decide to make a youtube tutorial channel about a software that costs $30,000 a license necessarily). In contrast, try searching for "Blender tutorial" in youtube and just take a cursory glance and the absurdly exhaustive amount of resources out there about learning Blender.

I have been teaching myself Blender because I want to make similar tutorial videos because it is ridiculous to me idea that in 2025 geologists don't have an open format to visualize geologic structures and map them in a natural 3d environment that can be then shared with other geologists, in a established non-proprietary format that a geologist can ensure that any other geologist can open and view the model/data themselves, because again if you have a computer you can get Blender....

I am firmly of the belief that Blender should be taught as a basic part of a Geology curriculum along with a GIS class, not a primary focus or anything, but the tool is so general and so broadly useful that I think we owe it to future scientists to teach everybody we can how to use Blender.

As a last point, I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting using Blender to make cool fancy cinematic visualizations of Geology because it looks cool, or suggesting trying to do lots of complex modelling and computation in Blender instead of a GIS software, those are both awesome uses of Blender but what I am suggesting is that by simply teaching the next generation of Geologists how to use a 3d modelling software just for the simple purposes of giving them a tool to sketch out ideas or explore a geologic map from a 3d perspective (which can be useful ESPECIALLY when talking to other people about specific geologic structures that are difficult to explain without a 3d perspective to point to) Blender is going to forever change how Geologists use computers to do Geology.

It is a cool moment because on the flip side... there is a LOT of money in Geology and I think the Blender community could and will absolutely find serious, sustainable long term funding from Geology companies and academia associated entities that could massively bolster development capability and funding security.

It's possible in Ligma, too.

Is it possible to learn this power??

I agree.

Just recently, I used GIMP 3.0 to create what will become a sticker on the side of a dozen hockey helmets.

It was a small project but it probably went back and forth a dozen times as each version delivered sparked new ideas or new questions on what was possible. Layers, filters, alpha channel, Smart Selection, and working with text and font outlines were all essential.

I don’t do all this stuff all the time. There is no way I would ever pay for Photoshop. Yet, my standard Linux install had everything I needed to get it done. And it was not that hard.

Truly amazing when you think about it. We are all so entitled.