I should be able to find the command to save my file without needing to know about that lossy distinction.
If there's a potential problem the software can ask me how it should be resolved, when it needs to be resolved.
I can do this with paint.net.
I do this all the time with Corel Painter. Any work in progress gets saved in a way that opens with the layers (corel's format). When I'm done, I can simply collapse the layers and save in a number of formats. No big deal. I understand that some formats simply don't allow the layers. That shouldn't be an issue, though. All it takes is a popup telling the user about this.
Why? I don't understand this. You're not "saving" what you see on the monitor by storing the information to a .png file; the moment you "save" you'll lose some information decided by an algorithm you do not understand, so it really is not "saving" anything, it's "exporting" what you see on the monitor to a different format. When you actually click the "save" button in gimp it stores the content in a format it can recover 100% of the information you'll need tomorrow. These sort of terminological differences between Photoshop, Paint.NET, Gimp, Krita etc... do not point a deficiency in Gimp, rather just a cultural difference decided by rational arguments. I think people should be more thoughtful about what are the targets of Gimp Project, Gimp does not want to be a Photoshop clone, they're trying to make a great image manipulation program; and as software engineers they make their own decisions how to structure/name their program.
When x is standard workflow for many of the other such programs (and things like word processors) and it isn't such in Gimp, that very thing drives people away. Most artists aren't going to care what the software engineers want in the program: Instead, they are going to care about things like this. When added up, it just makes for a frustrating experience. It doesn't really matter what the technicalities are if you are the artist.
Yes, you do lose some information depending on the format. Heck, I notice loss simply looking at an image on different screens. The fact is, though, that folks actually need to save in different formats. Sure, I keep my layers and information in tact while working, but folks also need to be able to share their work, print it, and things like that. For that sort of thing, you need the different formats. The exact format depends on what one is doing: PNG works for facebook and instagram. Some sites have file size limits, and with some printing you have a bit more leeway.
I'm not even a photoshop fan myself: I chose my software based on both if it was easily integrated with a Wacom pen display and how well it mimicked traditional artwork flow and styles. Hence my use of Corel. Photoshop is basically a renting program now, and I generally welcome alternatives. Gimp has always been somewhat frustrating because of little stuff like this.
As a user, I think about "saving" as a process to persist my work. If there might be technical fine-grained issues, show me a warning sign in the save dialog, but don't come up with a process that "makes me think".
As someone that edits PNGs and JPGs often with Photoshop I double click the file in the Finder (mac) or Windows Explorer (win) and suddenly I'm editing the PNG or JPG. I make some edits, if I add layers or features that can't be saved back to those formats I flatten the editing (Cmd-Shift-E, of course also on menus in 2 places). I then just press Cmd-S/Ctrl-S to save. No questions asked, no dialog pops up. Click->Edit->Save. If you have to edit often it's a huge difference with no interrupt in workflow.
But as I said this just one annoyance of many.
I have no intention of logging these as bugs because from my perspective they are implemented as per the developers’ vision.
But not mine. So I use other applications because I find them faster. And again, I’m not a photoshop guru so don’t think this is about comfort and learned keybindings or other muscle memory.
GEGL on the other hand is something I’m going to investigate further. Being able to use that for workflow would be very useful.
