brand new and completely clueless

[Sky]

Hey there.  I just downloaded GIMP.....at least I think I did.  Something appears to be very wrong and I an struggling.  I did not see a "new users who ask stupid questions" thread so please, if there is somewhere else I should be, by all means tell me!

I have to say also that I have absolutely no idea about anything graphic design related and a friend said this was an excellent program to cut my teeth on.  Plans are to start with the tutorials as soon as I can.

I am running Mac OS 10.13.5 and it took me nearly all day to figure out how to install this!  All of the suggestions are over a year old and none of them seemed to be right on point.

I think I actually have it on my laptop now, but when it opens everything is grey/black.  There are not lovely color graphics or images as shown in the tutorials.  Is this normal for Mac users?  The only image that has any color is the GIMP "about" image.

Help please.......and thank you!!

[rich2005]

Very few (none) OSX users around here.

As a non-Mac user I often wonder why Apple seen to change folder locations so much. At least you seem to have a Gimp that starts.

The default 'skin' for Gimp is that very dark theme. I think it is useless.

Easy to change.

In Gimp go to Edit -> Preferences -> Theme and choose Light or maybe System
then
In Icon Theme choose Color or Legacy While there is a slider at the bottom to adjust the icon size.

Now remember to OK that before closing the windows.

A screen shot showing the items to look for: https://i.imgur.com/XMqT4bv.jpg

[Ofnuts]

You likely installed the latest version, 2.10. This version is known to use a default theme which is way less colorful than the previous versions.

As a  short-term solution,  you can go to Edit>Preferences>Themes and see if there us a "Legacy" or  "System" theme which is a bit more colorful (the light grey themes are a bit easier on the eyes IMHO). Note that there are separate themes for icons.

In the long term, you can fully redefine the interface looks but this requires some skills, or locating a theme shared by someone else (but 2.10 is quite new, so not that many themes are available).

Important: most of the tutorials you will come across have been written/shot in Gimp 2.8 (or even 2.6) days. In 2.10, the user interface has changed, tools have changed, and some of the new things work completely differently. So take all the tutorials with a huge grain of salt (they are often not that reliable anyway).