@Shelenn Ayres I have nothing bad to say about gimp in general. It's OSS and I greatly appreciate its existence. That said, it does seem to be having a hard time progressing significantly in recent years. Personally I really think Krita is showing more promise, especially if it continues gaining momentum with development. Right now it isn't where gimp is, but it has a slick UI and works pretty well for what it attempts to implement.

I hate to give any props to proprietary software, but PS does have some killer features, and a much better workflow, when compared to gimp. I don't want to see gimp mirror PS, I'm fine with a different workflow, but really it feels very patchwork in it's implimentation with little cohesive workflow at all. It's just stagnated for so long now and I worry the project has just reached a point where it's too difficult to impliment many modern features using the current code base. There's been improvements with CMYK support and some other things that are needed for real design use, outside of web-graphics, but even that took over a decade to be implimented properly, iirc. But again, I'm just happy that we have anything that is somewhat comparable in the OSS library! It's just that we have a top notch vector app, we have great type setting tools, there's even some very nice simipro/pro audio stuff out there (although you wouldn't know it from the UI, but who cares really) that gets better latency than anything in Windows, and Blender is amazing for all sorts of 3D design... but when it comes to general graphic design and video editing I can't honestly convince anyone that we can offer something equal or better in OSS... Still, I've forgone windows all together. I can make do with gimp & krita for the most part, with sacrafices, but I have yet to find a video editor that matches, not just Adobe Premiere, even just Sony Vegas. I'm always trying new OS video and graphics tools when I come across them though. I think it's just a matter of time.

What are your thoughts on Krita @Shelenn Ayres ?

Great info here @Shelenn Ayres ! Thanks for sharing. At some point i've tried most (if not all) of the video editors you've mentioned and always found one key element missing that I guess I had always been spoilt by in Adobe Premier/AE & Sony Vegas back in my Windows days... namely, envelope control of various parameters. I got so used to this that I find it very hard to edit confortably with any of these tools. Maybe there is some other paradigm for automating parameters that I have simply not yet grok'd. I'm sure Blender could probably do this, but I've barely scratched the surface in that app, and nothing involving video editing. I get the impression that it can do some of the things I might be missing from AE, like scripting parameters, motion tracking, etc.. But the real killer feature for me is simple envelope control of params in an otherwise fairly basic video editor. Have you came across an app that might do this? It's entirely possible that it's been right under my nose and I've over looked it.

And I think your accessment is accurate for gimp vs. krita. Krita is more geared towards brushes, GUI fx control (vs scripting in gimp, although it might support some scripting too, not sure) and traditional PS-style layers/masks/etc that have become mostly ubiquitous (and at this point probably are done better in gimp). What makes me excited about Krita though is that the UI is much more consice and the project, last I checked (which was admittedly a while ago) had more activity and momentum that gimp. I think if Krita keeps up it's evolution it could become something quite nice to fill that niche right inbetween a) something user-friendly, but very limited, like Pinta (a simple but nice sort of ms paint app), and b) something like gimp, which is highy robust & powerful but less intuitive or user-friendly for basic graphic design.

Let me know if you have any suggestions on the envelope thing. I'd be so grateful if you have come across such features in OSS land and could point me in the right direction! :P