GIMP, the widely known free and open-source image editing software, has received its next major iteration. GIMP is one of the oldest, most enduring open-source projects and has been in development since the late 90s. It has long served as an alternative to proprietary software such as Adobe Photoshop, offering a solid feature set for graphic design, photo retouching, digital painting, and image manipulation.
Despite its strengths, GIMP has always faced some criticism, with user complaints regarding its performance on complex projects, lackluster user interface, and the absence of non-destructive editing features. However, improvements have since been made in these areas, and this release further addresses some of these concerns.
GIMP 3.0 is the result of seven years of dedicated work by volunteer developers, designers, artists, and community members, following the release of version 2.10. This new iteration focuses on enhancing the overall user experience with a range of usability improvements designed to help users work more efficiently.
One of the major highlights of this release is the ability to adjust filters in a non-destructive way, now available for most commonly used filters. This is a significant change compared to previous versions, where filters were automatically merged onto the layer, preventing further edits without repeatedly undoing changes, making the process tedious. In addition to this, users can now see their changes in real time with an on-canvas preview.
GIMP 3.0 introduces support for several new file formats, including macOS ICNS, Windows CUR and ANI cursors, JPEG XL, among others. It also offers improved support for PSD (Photoshop) files. This expanded file format support includes BC7 DDS files, a modern texture compression format particularly useful for game development. BC7 offers high-quality compression, efficient memory usage, and GPU optimization, making it ideal for creating realistic textures, detailed surfaces, and assets requiring alpha transparency.
Layer organization in GIMP 3.0 has become much easier with the ability to select multiple items at once and move or transform them together. In addition, a new feature allows the paint tool to automatically expand the layer size, removing the need to manually resize it when unsure how large the drawing will be.
GIMP has also received a much-needed improvement to its text engine, making it easier to distinguish fonts within the same family and accurately display true bold and italic styles. In GIMP 3.0, users can style text with outlines, shadows, bevels, and more while still being able to edit the text, change fonts and sizes, and adjust style settings. Other enhancements include improved font loading, better backward compatibility, support for text colors with floating-point precision, and the ability to apply non-destructive editing (NDE) filters to create outlines and other effects, making it easier to achieve professional-quality text.
GIMP 3.0 expands support for RGB color spaces beyond sRGB, allowing users to load images with different color profiles and edit them without losing color space information. Additionally, this update lays the foundation for future support of CMYK and LAB color modes, bringing GIMP closer to becoming a more advanced image editor for a wider range of professional workflows.
In this release, the GUI library powering GIMP's user interface has been upgraded to GTK3, bringing several key improvements. These include better UI scaling on HiDPI screens, which has been a common concern among GIMP users, as well as native support for Wayland, a modern windowing system for Linux distributions, while still maintaining compatibility with X11. The update also offers improved tablet input support, a new theme system that allows users to create custom themes using CSS, and several bug fixes that could not be addressed in the previous GTK2-based version.
Upon launching the software, a welcome dialog is now optionally displayed, featuring various tabs that provide quick access to loading or creating images, adjusting user preferences, and more.
Last but not least, GIMP 3.0 introduces a refreshed logo featuring a sleeker version of Wilber, the beloved GIMP mascot. While it may not be the most groundbreaking feature, it might just make launching the software a little more tempting.
This is just a summary of the key highlights in this release. For the full list of new features and improvements, be sure to check out the official release notes.
