Yeah, even the UX of creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions. Or entering and exiting a selection. In Photoshop, Ctrl+D simply deselects my selection. In GIMP, I have to jump through hoops. Need to select a tool to transform, Ctrl+T just doesn't do it.

In fact Ctrl+D duplicating the current buffer instead of deselecting is the worst UX I have come across.

Hmm?

> creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions

Creating an image from clipboard: Ctrl+V. Makes an image the size of the image on the clipboard. Cut to taste.

If you want to paste the image on a larger canvas, Ctrl+N, select the canvas size, fill it with color or leave transparent, Ctrl+V to paste from clipboard, move the pasted layer around.

I don't see how that would be more efficient in PS.

In Photoshop, doing Ctrl+N while you have an image in your clipboard sets your initial buffer dimensions to the dimensions of the image in the clipboard. I just tried the Ctrl+V straight before creating an initial buffer and worked like you described. I'll use this shortcut for sure, just a matter of breaking the Ctrl+N habit there.

However my point stands about transpose and deselect being much more cumbersome than they need to be. Ideally ENTER should finalize the transpose/resize. Ctrl+D is also quite sensible to deselect. But neither work as expected on GIMP.

I guess GIMP to a certain extent could use alternative modes for its key bindings, akin to what many IDEs offer.

When you first start IntelliJ, it will ask you which set of shortcuts you are more used to. You can pick between OSX Default, Emacs, Windows Default, Linux Default, Visual Studio etc.

It would be great if I could pick between at least "GIMP-native" and "Photoshop-expat".

Otherwise, GIMP is more than capable to do what I am doing in Photoshop. Which is pretty basic stuff. Basically the Paint.NET subset of features are what majority uses it for anyway.