Typical "we know this feature is asked many times, but it not on our priority/ it is not planned"
I’m not criticizing open source itself, but I think this highlights a common issue in open source software, one that distinguishes widely adopted projects like Blender from others. Successful open source software tends to reach users beyond just those within the open source movement.
I know some might disagree, saying that these developers work for free, but that’s not the point here. Software is created for users, and if a developer declines to implement a feature requested by the user base, many will simply return to proprietary alternatives—like Adobe Photoshop or Photo Pea, in this case. This leaves these open source projects feeling like “second-class citizens” because they lack the specific features users need.
Use the circle selection tool, mark an area, fill it with a solid colour/gradient/texture or morph it further or stroke the path to create a hollow circle
So many options that amount to more than just a shape tool.
i just want pressure sensitivity that actually works, GIMP used to be my go to for art stuff in the past, its a shame to see that it hasn't really improved much over the past decade. I've switched completely to Krita, better overall software
GIMP needs a glow up. It looks like what it is, but for a program looking for artists and designers to switch - you’re not going to get it by looking like the Temu photoshop.
I use GIMP only for the simple pixel stuff, and I hope they did not make basic operations even more complicated. I always struggle to get some basic things done just because there are myriads of for me useless and arcane settings.
There is already a killer plugin for Gimp 3.0.0 called "Batcher" that lets you batch edit and convert images (including pdfs) either with a GUI interface or from the command line. There are already plenty of tools that can do this from the command line, or that are commercial paid software... but this is a pretty damn powerful utility to have attached to a fully featured free and open source image editor that you could teach someone who is uncomfortable with scripting how to make a bunch of edits across a large amount of image files with.
GIMP (at least in v2) does have a vector path tool and stores the paths with the image! Thing is, they kind of work like selections and you have to explicitly stroke the paths on bitmap layers. It's a bit more complicated than necessary and not easy to grasp at first.
I looked up what a "shape tool" is supposed to do. How about using better tools for this, like Inkscape, export as pixel file (png or whatever), and import it into GIMP?