We’re proud to present the first release of GIMP 3.2!
This marks a year of design, development, and testing from volunteers and our community.
Here are some of the many highlights to look out for:
Link Layers
You can now use Link Layers to incorporate external image as part of your compositions, easily scaling, rotating, and transforming them without losing quality or sharpness. It functions similar to the “Smart Object” concept from Photoshop. The Link Layer will automatically update if the external image is changed in another editor – for example, if you include a SVG logo as a Link Layer in GIMP, you can edit it in Inkscape and see the changes live in GIMP as well!
You can create a new Link Layer by choosing Open as Link Layer… in the File menu. You can change the image used at any time in the Layer Attributes dialog, which you can access by double-clicking the layer in the dock or by choosing Edit Layer Attributes… from the layer menu.
Vector Layers
The Path tool can now create Vector Layers, which lets you draw shapes with adjustable fill and stroke settings. The shape of the vector layer also automatically updates whenever you adjust the path, and you can non-destructively rotate, scale, and transform it too
PaintBrush improvements
The MyPaint Brush tool has been upgraded, adding 20 new brushes, including a much-requested arrow brush. It now automatically adjusts to your canvas zoom and rotation for more dynamic painting.
Better Text Editor
Our Text Editor has been the focus of several development projects to improve its usability and functionality. You can now drag the on-canvas text editor to move it out of the way when writing text. Several common shortcuts are now supported (such as Ctrl + B for bold, Ctrl + I for italics, and Shift + Ctrl + V for pasting unformatted text).
Non-Destructive Filter Updates
As well as working on new non-destructive layers (vector layers, link layers, and text layers), we’ve also been working on the non-destructive filters! You can now apply filters to channels non-destructively, in addition to layers and layer groups.
Overwrite Mode
A new Overwrite paint mode allows you to draw over existing colors without blending their transparency. It has many useful applications when working with pixel art
UX/UI improvements
This release includes a TON of small user interface and user experience improvements
New System color scheme
There is a new system color scheme for default themes. If set, it will automatically update GIMP’s theme colors to match the current OS settings.
Automatic transparency
The Crop Tool and NDE filters now automatically add transparency to a layer when necessary, rather than requiring you to remember to do it manually.
Switch between tools easily
You can now quickly switch back and forth between your 2 most recent tools with the Shift + X shortcut
Welcome Dialog improvements
The Welcome Dialog has received improvements to help streamline user workflows.
It now recognizes the Ctrl + 0, 1, 2… 9 shortcuts for opening the most recent images.
It now recognizes your shortcuts to create a new image, or open an existing one (whether the respective default Ctrl + N or Ctrl + O, or your custom shortcuts)
The Welcom Dialog no longer appears if you intentionally open GIMP with an image
Flip images with your keyboard
The Flip and Shear Tools now respond to the arrow keys, similar to the Move and Rotate Tools.
Flip Tool: You can use the Left and Right arrows to flip the image horizontally, and the Up and Down arrows to flip it vertically.
Shear Tool: You can use the Left and Right arrows to shear your image horizontally, and the Up and Down arrows to do the same vertically. Like the Move tool, you can hold down Shift to shear with a larger value.
For Script and Plug-in Developers
GIMP 3.0 brought non-destructive filters and a new GimpDrawableFilter API for script developers to create them. However, it wasn’t easy to find the names and properties for the extensive list of potential filters, especially for third-party GEGL filters. A new GEGL Filter browser has been added to make it easier to find non-destructive filters to use.
New formats
GIMP 3.2 includes built-in support for even more file formats! These range from well-known formats like APNGs to obsolete archival formats such as Seattle FilmWorks photos, supporting your quest of old data retrieval. For retro game developers, we now support Sony PlayStation TIM and Sega Dreamcast PVR textures.
We also added export support for JPEG 2000 images, which is the standard for the digital cinema industry. This now matches our import support, which we’ve had since GIMP 2.8
In addition to our existing darktable and RawTherapee plug-ins, we’ve added support for using ART for editing Camera RAW images.
As a side effect of adding support for NASA‘s .hgt.zip image format, GIMP can now load compressed images from any format that we currently support.
Total Ink Coverage value
You can now see the Total Ink Coverage value for a color in the CMYK Color Selector. This is useful to know when soft-proofing your image for printing, as your printer may have an ink coverage limit to prevent over-saturation of the page.
https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.2.html#usability-improvements
This release is a true GAME CHANGER!! Nothing will ever be the same. Adobe just got punched right in the face.
You can support Gimp
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If you’re a developer, we always welcome more code contributions – we’ve even marked some reports for “Newcomers” to help you ease into the codebase.
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We’re looking for more feedback from designers to help create a better user experience.
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You may also donate to support the existing team members.
Thank you SO MUCH to developers, designers, translators, testers, donors and all members of our community 👏🏼👏🏼
I wouldn’t call this a “face-punch” to adobe, but GIMP is one of those softwares that just keeps getting better with every update no matter what
they finally fixed their awful text editor!
If they really want to punch Adobe in the face they need to give GIMP’s UI the Blender treatment.
at minimum it would be nice if they just looked at the spacing and organization of the different palettes. This does not look tidy… or professional, really. It looks cramped and messy.
Half the elements are sharp, half are blurry. Icons look different sizes. Random amounts of spacing between elements. This is the UI of a piece of graphic editing software too…cmon guys.
From my experience Gimp also has issues when one of the screens connected to the pc has fractional scaling. It just makes the UI look like shit on all screens for some reason.
I made a theme which is more professional-looking and less busy/cramped if you’re interested:
https://jpicture.net/printroomexpertsuperflat/
I’m about to release a dark version of it too.
Nice, I’ll check it out
Cool, let me know what you think - I’m open to feedback 👍
well, the first thing is that you might want to update the instructions for finding the themes folder. In Gimp I had to look under preferences-interface-theme to find the folder – and even then it was a bit of a journey, since I installed it with flatpak, so the folder ended up being in /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.gimp.GIMP/x86_64/stable/5c600asdghjsd0cfe6e9e5bcf71a2e8a1a7e0ca018f43aabfa38dc12bd0954034f06/files/share/gimp/3.0/themes/
…while the Gimp settings just say app/share/gimp/3.0/themes/Ah good old flatpak strikes again.
I’d forgotten that flatpak is a pain for this and I ended up manually working around it.
I’m thinking of adding the following to the download page:
“When installed via Flatpak, GIMP folders can be hard to find. I recommend creating your own folder for downloaded themes and adding it to GIMP: Create a new folder e.g ‘my-gimp-themes’ somewhere that makes sense to you and then place the unzipped PrintroomExpertSuperflat folder inside it. Then, in GIMP, go to Edit > Preferences > Folders > Themes, click the ‘Add a new folder’ button on the left and then the ‘Open a file selector…’ button on the right and select your my-gimp-themes folder. Finally, click the OK button. New themes will become avalable after restarting GIMP. All further theme downloads can be placed in the my-gimp-themes folder.”
Would you mind letting me know if that makes sense and works for you? Thanks!
Its getting better. Doesn’t mean it’s the best yet.
Keep the good work. And listen to feedback.
Its getting better. Doesn’t mean it’s the best yet.
Are you implying that a particular older version of GIMP was the “best” version and that current versions are worse? Or what are you saying?
I used Photoshop for over a decade, took several classes, spending thousands of hours using it. I quit using it when they wanted me too pay for it as a service. Recently I tried GIMP, and though it took me a while to find some things, I’m now doing everything I could do previously with Photoshop, ironically except link layers. That was the last thing I needed to fully endorse GIMP, and it seems to be exactly what I needed. Fantastic work!!
I just 100% all-the-time will always want someone to release a fork of GIMP that is totally identical in every way but has a different name. I can’t tell you the amount of time it was rejected by schools because of it.
I assumed it was a foreign thing, but no, it was actually made in America.
Kimball and Mattis formed the acronym GIMP by adding the letter G to “-IMP”
OP… It’s a software release. Stop with this unnecessary tribalism bullshit
I’m not for “tribalism” if it’s related to a specific piece of software vs. another. But I definitely am on the side of open source vs. a garbage subscription based model of closed source software.
