I wonder why Gimp doesn't get more backing like Blender to increase the pace of development. Not enough interest from big backers? Surely many would benefit from dumping Adobe if alternatives could be on par.
Its internal dev-people world is different and doesn't take direct critique as opportunity (or compliment e.g. I want to contribute with my better-outcome-vision) in the same way some other projects do.
Not good or bad (unless you love one way more), more like comparatively differing in that way
Just comparing to how fast some projects like OBS evolve for example both in features and ease of use, Gimp feels very slow and unfortunately not focused on usability.
Krita kind of leads the pack in the "FOSS image editing development fund" category with 17k/month. It's not the same primary use case but there is enough overlap in what it can do that I'd say GIMP is neither in the lead enough or differentiated enough to garner significant support easily.
Krita is indeed pretty popular for artists at least and yeah, there is an overlap. But still, Blender seems to have way more massive backing in general.
I think the difference is the amount of competition. Blender's alternative is Autodesk. Meanwhile there are plenty of alternatives to Gimp as seen in these comments.
