Outlining text is easy too. true, there isn't a magic text outline button, you must use the same method you would use to outline any arbitrary object.
The sum of your complaints are because you know how to do it in PS. I am a professional graphics designer and artist and I use gimp exclusively.
I used to use The GIMP exclusively, but I jumped to Photoshop when I could afford it, due to GIMP's poor UX and adjustment layers (which have been "coming soon" with GEGL since 2008).
Or PS is just more intuitive than GIMP.
> I am a professional graphics designer
Once you are using a tool professionally, I guess that intuitiveness is no longer a selling point. It is though for someone that only use it from time to time...
I'm talking about horizontally or vertically aligning a layer relative to the image, not the text within the rectangle bounding box of the text input box when you have the text tool activated.
It's such a common use case to want to take a layer (whether or not it's text isn't important) and center it horizontally or vertically relative to the entire image or another object.
I'm not sure what you mean.
If you have a 1000 x 1000 image I'd like to put the text "Hello" exactly in the middle of the image, both vertically and horizontally and let the tool determine the exact bounding box of the text input based on how much text I have.
> All of these "features" sound like training wheels for graphic designers.
In GIMP I described the workflow how to do that using the alignment tool. I also described for comparison how to do it in Photopea because it only involves dragging the layer near where it should be and it auto-snaps to perfect center with guidelines that appear when you're close.
This isn't a training wheels feature because both casual and professional graphic designers aren't eyeballing a pixel perfection alignment every time without thinking, but Photopea gives you this outcome with the least amount of effort you can ask for and its accuracy is 100%.
> It's not hard whatsoever to accomplish, and assuredly not worth paying monthly for.
There's a difference between hard and convenient. Executing a checklist of steps isn't hard but it sure is inconvenient if I need to do that every time I want to align something. It's the difference between something having a good / intuitive UI vs not.
How do you do the solid color background in Gimp? In Photoshop, I'd select the background with the magic wand (contiguous or non-contiguous, depending on preference), potentially use one of those edge-improving tools, then either press delete or create a mask. It apparently also has a special tool for it that I haven't used before but seems to do basically that.
When Blender finally bit-the-bullet and overhauled their UI - in a way that more aligned itself with how other keys/clicks worked in similar tools - it totally relaunched itself and is now so much easier to use.
It would be great it Gimp (and inkscape) did a similar overhaul IMHO.
For example a very common thing you might want to do is add text (or any other layer) on top of an image and then center that text / layer either vertically or horizontally relative to the image.
In Photopea you create a text layer and then drag it near the middle and it'll show you guidelines when you're close and then snap into the perfect center (either vertically, horizontally or both). It takes like 2 seconds and feels intuitive.
In GIMP you have to make sure you switch to the alignment tool which is hidden by default so you need to remember to hit Q to activate it or hover over the move tool and select it but if you hit Q you better make sure you're not in any text input because it'll insert "Q" instead of switching your tool, but since you're adding text chances are you will be so you need to remember to click away. Then you need make sure you click an active area of your text layer and click the align horizontal icon, then you need to click the align vertical icon. Then if you decide you want to change your text you have to repeat this whole process again.
Another example is adding a simple stroke (line) around some text or other layer effects that Photoshop has had for over 10+ years.
In Photopea, you open up layer styles, pick the stroke option and can tweak the colors and thickness very quickly. After applying the style you can change and move around your text and the styles are applied to it automatically, it feels intuitive to use.
In GIMP I spent an hour researching plugins to add this behavior and after picking one it technically works but the user experience is pretty hostile. It creates the stroke as a separate layer so you can't move your text and the stroke together unless you remember to link them, and if you decide to change your text content or size you have to delete the old stroke layer and make a new one.
GIMP is really good in terms of what it can do but using it feels like death by a thousand paper cuts because you need to do so many steps to accomplish what feels like basic things that other editors have had for years when it comes to user friendly features.
I understand creating a highly polished image editor isn't easy and honestly if I knew their code base I would open a PR for the snap to center guidelines but at this point I have to imagine if they wanted to add that feature it would have been added. From the outside it feels like it hasn't been added because they don't want that feature, but as an end user that makes me wonder why. It's such a useful thing.