Paint Shop Pro in particular did a good job of combining bitmap and vector objects. Not sure if it still does, it's undergone many changes since I was familiar with it. There was also an associated editor dedicated to SVG, but I think they gave up on that long ago.

I agree they don't do the same thing, but I agree with dest that the Inkscape UI is much better than GIMP. I've used GIMP way more than Inkscape, so I should be more comfortable with it. But I end up feeling like GIMP is fighting me in ways that Inkscape would like me to get things done.

I personally find GIMP more intuitive than Inkscape. I think most of it depends on what you're using the tool for, though, and I think I just do more GIMPy takss than Inkscapey tasks right now.

Try using Inkscape to cut a person out of a photo, adjust contrast/white balance, and add a vignette...

On the other hand, try making a beautiful invoice template in gimp, with a nicely laid out table, and nicely typeset text....

It's kind of like comparing Word to PowerPoint. Both can place text on pages, and it's possible to write an essay in PowerPoint, or make a presentation in Word, but you'll be hurting to do it.

Right. But somebody who uses both word processors and slide programs can definitely cross-compare in terms of UI quality and polish.

To pick a more obvious dimension, if somebody said, "Word is buggier than Powerpoint", nobody would say, "You can't compare them because they don't do the same thing." Bugginess is an abstractable quality across kinds of product.

The same thing is true about UI quality. It goes well beyond intuitiveness. You can look at fit-and-finish details. You can look at number of unnecessary actions. You can look at difficulty for novices completing common tasks. You can compare utility of error messages. How much are key concepts related to a task obvious vs hidden? Et cetera, et cetera.

In my experience, Inkscape is better in that dimension. I think this even though I have used GIMP a lot more, and so normally would be biased the other way, because familiarity makes its UI issues less obvious to me.

I don't think this is true: Both are editing programs. The main subject being edited is a single file (as opposed to multi-file projects, like an IDE does). Both therefore need a UI for file handling (load/save their "native" format that exactly represents their internal model), import/export of other formats, undo/redo, etc.

For both there is the question how editing multiple files at the same time is being dealt with, i.e. how processes and windows relate to files. Both have to arrange many tools and helpers together with the main view on the file being edited. Both want to have help and documentation. The files being edited support meta-data.

Both raster images and vector images are visual and can therefore be exported to other visual representations, and especially both can be printed. So both programs have to deal with printing, page setup etc.

The whole topic of colors and color spaces applies to both raster images and vector images.

I could go on, but the above should give a hint how much these programs conceptually have in common.