The trouble with FOSS alternatives is they don't have 100% features parity and usually when (is a 'when', not an 'if') the average designer will meet one of those lacking features he will blame it on the FOSS app. Possibly he will judge is worth paying for the proprietary solution for that feature only.
A big trouble, minimised by the author, is the poor interoperability. Yes, FOSS graphic design apps will "sort of" open files from their proprietary counterparts. In a lot of cases this means open them in an unusable form.
A big issue, for which I don't have a solution, is the FOSS apps sometimes do operations in their own way. While this is normal, as they are not clones and sometime they do it better, for the average designer this means a learning curve, frustration and anger. A result of this is the well known meme "GIMP has a bad UI", which is arguably not true.
With all the above said, I should witness in my career as a part-time freelance graphic designer, I can count on my fingers the cases when FOSS apps were not enough to get my job done. And this is a good thing.
What are the biggest areas in which GIMP needs to improve? Most will quickly reply, without thinking, "usability", but that's a poor answer, you already covered: a 100% Photoshop clone wouldn't necessarily be better. The area where I, as a daily user, I find the poorest is performance. I use Linux, so I can't make a direct speed comparison with Photoshop, but compared with darktable, GIMP is really slow for some image processing.
Yes, I know, somewhere on the roadmap, long after the gegl integration is done, hardware acceleration is supposed to help improve performance, but there are some solid years until then.
Another area where I would like GIMP to fare better, and for which I am not aware about any development is RAW image import where, again compared with darktable, is poor: both as user interaction, features set and performance.
Authored Comments
The trouble with FOSS alternatives is they don't have 100% features parity and usually when (is a 'when', not an 'if') the average designer will meet one of those lacking features he will blame it on the FOSS app. Possibly he will judge is worth paying for the proprietary solution for that feature only.
A big trouble, minimised by the author, is the poor interoperability. Yes, FOSS graphic design apps will "sort of" open files from their proprietary counterparts. In a lot of cases this means open them in an unusable form.
A big issue, for which I don't have a solution, is the FOSS apps sometimes do operations in their own way. While this is normal, as they are not clones and sometime they do it better, for the average designer this means a learning curve, frustration and anger. A result of this is the well known meme "GIMP has a bad UI", which is arguably not true.
With all the above said, I should witness in my career as a part-time freelance graphic designer, I can count on my fingers the cases when FOSS apps were not enough to get my job done. And this is a good thing.
What are the biggest areas in which GIMP needs to improve? Most will quickly reply, without thinking, "usability", but that's a poor answer, you already covered: a 100% Photoshop clone wouldn't necessarily be better. The area where I, as a daily user, I find the poorest is performance. I use Linux, so I can't make a direct speed comparison with Photoshop, but compared with darktable, GIMP is really slow for some image processing.
Yes, I know, somewhere on the roadmap, long after the gegl integration is done, hardware acceleration is supposed to help improve performance, but there are some solid years until then.
Another area where I would like GIMP to fare better, and for which I am not aware about any development is RAW image import where, again compared with darktable, is poor: both as user interaction, features set and performance.