Any experience using it's python scripting tools? I've done some scripting with gimp, but the documentation is really really poor and it was a much more frustrating experience than it ought to have been.
Krita is a complete replacement at this point. And, its features caters to drawing/painting to a greater degree than photoshop, by far. The brush engine is phenomenonal and just for this has become my favorite drawing tool.
Two tools into one. Snappy fast even on OSX, and feels very much native visually.
Tip: Veikk manufactures great 8192 pressure sensitivity A4 size tablets for about 40 to 60 bucks. Packed with extra nibs and everything . Krita and this obscure made of tablets plugged onto a commodity laptop is the best value artist station for all sort of digital work.
The entire industry of digital tools has hung itself on these magic words: "industry standard".
All the while, free software like Krita, Linux, and Blender have become viable, if not substantially better, alternatives to their proprietary incumbent counterparts. Practically every need that the industry has can be met using free tools. The hardest part is simply convincing people to use them.
The only way to use any of these tools is to learn why. Until you understand what things like "extrude" and "flip normals" mean, you are ultimately fumbling around an alien menu: the best you can do is order everything on it one at a time. You most certainly are not going to, "get this done ASAP."
Blender's UI/UX intentionally avoided this nonsense. Instead, you had to learn the basics. And once you did, it was easy to expand that knowledge; because every tool was well documented and placed into a coherent UX context. The recent UI/UX overhaul only expanded this by adding the "friendly" buttons you are looking for.
Actually, I had to repeat the experiment 2 days ago - after not using 3DS for decade. It's almost like a new program. But better. It took me 10 minutes to import a model, take it apart, do basic operations and try to optimize it (unsuccessfully). With no help, no internet, in a hurry and half-asleep. It's just logical. Anyway, the "Getting started" button is right there.
Blender is just freaking scary. But I'm giving it a try once a decade. :)
Gimp looks pretty bad in HiDPI and the GTK 3 build is not yet stable.
does it matter?
The good news is that the 3.0 release is expected to finally happen this year, and hopefully they'll adopt a more frequent release strategy thereon.
Tried Krita and it works great