Last Wednesday, the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, formerly General Image Manipulation Program) team finally announced that the long-awaited release of GIMP 3.0 is finally imminent— a release candidate version of GIMP 3.0 has arrived. This software version is close enough to finalization to be released to the community for testing and ironing out any final bugs.
Per the original blog post, "If user feedback reveals only small and easy to fix bugs, we will solve those problems and issue the result as GIMP 3.0. However, [...] If larger bugs and regressions are uncovered that require more substantial code changes, we may need to publish a second release candidate for further testing."
For those who have been using GIMP for a long while or have been aware of it, it may be a shock to hear that GIMP took this long to make it to 3.0. But as open source software and by far the most popular free image editing software available on the market, GIMP has had literal decades of iteration from dozens if not hundreds of open source software contributors.
Following the history of stable releases, GIMP has been on GIMP 2.0 or some iteration since 2004— then 2.4X from 2007, 2.6X in 2007, 2.8X in 2012, and has finally been on 2.10X from 2018 through to now, the final quarter of 2024. If all goes according to plan, the full stable release of GIMP will be GIMP 3.0 either by the end of this year or early 2025. Overall, the original version of GIMP lasted from '95 through 2003, marking 8 years for GIMP 1 and a whopping 20 years for GIMP 2.
So, what has changed with the debut of GIMP 3? The new interface is still quite recognizable to classic GIMP users but has been considerably smoothed out and is far more scalable to high-resolution displays than it used to be. Several familiar icons have been carefully converted to SVGs or Scalable Vector Graphics, enabling supremely high-quality, scalable assets.
While PNGs, or Portable Network Graphics, are also known to be high-quality due to their lack of compression, they are still suboptimal compared to SVGs when SVGs are applicable. The work of converting GIMP's tool icons to SVG is still in progress per the original blog post, but it's good that developer Denis Rangelov has already started on the work.
Many aspects of the GIMP 3.0 update are almost wholly on the backend for ensuring project and plugin compatibility with past projects made with previous versions of GIMP. To summarize: a public GIMP API is being stabilized to make it easier to port GIMP 2.10-based plugins and scripts to GIMP 3.0. Several bugs related to color accuracy have been fixed to improve color management while still maintaining compatibility with past GIMP projects.
GIMP Bros, the number will soon iterate from 2 to 3... Are we back or is it somehow more fricking over than ever?
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/free-open-source-photoshop-alternative-finally-enters-release-candidate-testing-after-20-years-the-transition-from-gimp-2-x-to-gimp-3-0-took-two-decades
- 33
- 47
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
is it really that big an update?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
THEY'RE BRINGING IN A USABLE CIRCLE TOOL
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
WOAAAAH BUDDDY. That might be a bit too advanced
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Yes, the icons are being updated. This is a fricking gamechanger
Rumor has it that the File/Edit menus have been updated as well!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
adobe is finished, creative cloud will have zero subscribers
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Unconfirmed, but there is a rumor out their that 4.0 is going to be released in 2028 with revolutionary UI/UX updates including softer, more apple-like close and minimize buttons. I cannot wait
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Will it open the layers/paths and tools menu on launch consistently?
!commenters
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Now all the yters who cry that GIMP is different then adobe and therefore worse will shut up !linuxchads
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
They're launching GIMP 3 without the full NDE support that PS had over a decade prior. And not even the actual release like it was supposed to be earlier this year but the release candidate that may or may not have another release candidate if the bugs aren't ironed out.
Verdict: Never even began.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I fricking hate acronyms, I google this shit and all I get are Near Death Experiences
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Just means Non-Destructive Editing, which is sort of like having version control in an image editing project. Basically a fundamental feature that GIMP has been promising for over a decade.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
I use Gimp for photo editing what photoshop used to be for before it became some heavy, bloated AI and general art industry monster
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Only usecase GIMP has atm.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Yep, Krita and Inkscape are better for everything else.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Paint.net is better than gimp for the simple shit because you don't have to navigate Linux user UI lol
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Paint.NET and Notepad++ are the only two worthwhile programs for Windows.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
I use Paint.Net
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Real neighbors use photopea
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
I don't really understand the doom and gloom about Gimp. What exactly can you do with Photoshop that is inconvenient or impossible with Gimp?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Is there anything I should be excited for? I use GIMP like every day for work.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
As someone using 20 year-old photoshop because it is superior to GIMP every time, including earlier this year when I gave everything out there a week or two at work to try them out ...
you have my condolences.
Do yourself a favor and get Photoshop Elements while it's a one-time $99 purchase. It is infinity better than GIMP unless you are the extremely small use case user they cater to at GIMP
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Maybe I should. Although honestly like 90% of what I use it for is cutting things out into pngs. So I'm not sure if I actually need Photoshop.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
There are at least a half-dozen image editor programs out there, these days. Most of them are not as hostile toward actual usability as GIMP. A few are free to use or very low cost despite being relatively full-featured. Honestly you should give each a week or two test drive and see if you can find something that doesn't induce madness so quickly.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
I don't care. I'm still gonna use gimp. I don't care that Krita's slightly better than Gimp. I want to neurodivergentally edit pixels with mathematical precision, and export to a variety of formats according to my preferences that day. I don't see why people have such a hate-erection towards the Green Pepper Apparatus.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Krita has better brushes, but I really like GIMP a lot better (that might be Stockholm Syndrome)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Well, like I said, it's a lot easier to edit pictures with some measure of precision in Gimp while Krita expects you to do things in a rather artsy and imprecise way.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I never liked gimps UI I always used paint.NET for image edigting and now krita for drawing birds
gimp always felt ugly and way too busy for what I was trying to do
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Gimp cannot be back because it was never here in the first place.
Just use Krita.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Why would you download gimp when Photoshop 7 is free?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
wat
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
What's next? An AI to take the flavor out of food? An AI to take the feeling out of blowjobs? There was a time when even proposing something like this could get you beaten to death.
Snapshots:
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/free-open-source-photoshop-alternative-finally-enters-release-candidate-testing-after-20-years-the-transition-from-gimp-2-x-to-gimp-3-0-took-two-decades:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context