GIMP 2.99.18 Launched: The Final Improvement Preview Earlier than 3.0!

In the end, we carry you the ultimate growth model earlier than GIMP 3! Whereas the discharge of two.99.18 is a bit behind our intended schedule, there are a variety of recent options and enhancements that we’re very excited to share with you.

⚠️ ☢️
We remind {that a} growth model implies that it is a launch to point out
work-in-progress but additionally give a chance to the neighborhood to detect points
early and report points. In different phrase, that is an unstable model and we
don’t suggest to make use of it in manufacturing. Use it since you wish to assist GIMP
enhance by reporting bugs.

This model 2.99.18 particularly could be one of the vital unstable releases in
the two.99 sequence due to the house invasion. It’s anticipated and regular.
⚠️ ☢️

This information put up lists essentially the most notable and visual modifications. We don’t listing minor bug fixes or smaller enhancements right here. To get a extra full listing of modifications, it is best to discuss with the NEWS file or take a look at the commit history.

(Shade) Area Invasion

We now have been working very onerous on the Area Invasion venture, which is — as you might
recall —
our codename for the venture of constructing GIMP extra right concerning colours.

Currently now we have been porting older inside shade buildings (GimpRGB,
GimpCMYK, GimpHSV…) which we used to hold shade data to
GeglColor. This
generic object can comprise any shade information no matter shade mannequin, precision
or house supported by babl, our pixel encoding engine.

What it means for shade correctness particularly is that we are going to now do shade
conversion solely when wanted (last-second conversion) and subsequently gained’t lose
data when it might have been prevented. As an example, say you color-pick
shade from a picture: if we have been to transform to an intermediate format, earlier than
utilizing it on a second picture (which can or is probably not in one other shade format),
we’d do 2 conversions. Which implies extra risk of precision loss. The problem
is much more flagrant if the enter and output codecs are the identical (i.e. no
conversion ought to occur in any respect). And this might be much more an issue after we
can have core CMYK backend (we actually wish to keep away from doing a round-trip to an
intermediate format with CMYK, which doesn’t have bijective conversion with most
different shade fashions, even when working unbounded and ignoring precision points).

We’re additionally slowly shifting saved information to this generic shade object. In
specific it implies that shade palettes will be capable to comprise CMYK colours,
CIELAB colours or in another supported mannequin (and never solely these colours after a
conversion to unbounded sRGB).

A consequence for code maintainance is that it makes it quite a bit simpler to deal with
shade conversions inside our codebase, now that the construction embeds each the
information and its “that means”. It makes shade dealing with quite a bit much less bug-prone in comparison with
after we needed to maintain monitor of each data as separate information.

Lastly we’re working towards displaying shade house data in varied elements of
the interface, when related, akin to when displaying or selecting RGB, CMYK, HSL
or HSV information.
Values in these shade fashions with out the related shade house are
near-meaningless. Interface displaying values in RGB with out additional
data are a remnant of the previous when it principally meant sRGB. That is
clearly not true anymore in fashionable graphic work and the interface ought to make
this clear.

The beneath video exhibits a few of this interface work the place RGB, HSV or CMYK fashions
for example are at all times displaying the colour house the values are in (which very
usually means the title of the ICC profile). That is being performed within the shade picker
software, shade samples, FG/BG Shade dockable, “Change Foreground/Background Shade”
dialog and in additional locations.

Not solely this, however when folks choose a soft-proofing profile and activate
soft-proofing (e.g. by the good new simulation toggle which was added in GIMP
2.99.12),
we may even present out-of-gamut space not solely throughout the picture’s shade house, however
additionally the soft-proof house.

Essential warning: that is as soon as once more an enormous port in our codebase,
which impacted litterally 1000’s of traces of code. This work is unfinished
although it must be completed earlier than the primary launch candidate. Due to this fact
unstabilities or bugs are to be anticipated on this replace so in case you encounter any
concern, we suggest to report
them.

Improved Shade Algorithms

Øyvind Kolås improved just a few inside algorithms:

• Achromatic pixels within the Hue-Saturation software are actually special-cased in order that
  grayscale pixels (saturation of 0) are solely modified by the grasp adjustment,
  not by the pink adjustment.
• Grayscale gradients are actually saved achromatic even with “Dithering” checked in
  the Gradient software.

Because the space invasion venture goes on, getting issues
constant is getting simpler in varied color-related algorithms, therefore enabling
us to find points rapidly and repair them.

Preliminary Non-Harmful Enhancing

One space we’re “forward of schedule” on is the much-requested non-destructive modifying! The muse for these options has been laid by many builders over a few years, for the reason that introduction of GEGL into GIMP. Initially deliberate for the three.2 roadmap, an preliminary implementation was made as a continuation of a Google Summer time of Code venture. If you’re not acquainted with the time period, “non-destructive modifying” implies that filter results akin to Blur are saved separate from the layer’s pixels. Which means if in a while you wish to change a setting, rearrange, and even take away the filter, you may simply achieve this with out affecting the remainder of the picture. Till now, GIMP has adopted a damaging modifying workflow the place results have been instantly merged down onto the layer, so it is a main change!

Any GEGL operation that has a GUI is now utilized to layers non-destructively (Non-destructive results for layer masks and channels are deliberate for future updates.). This consists of third-party GEGL plug-ins and customized operations created with our GEGL Graph software. These results could be saved and loaded in .xcf venture information, though not all GEGL properties are supported within the present construct.

As soon as a filter has been utilized, you may work together with it additional by clicking the filter icon within the layers dockable. It will open a pop-up that exhibits all filters at present utilized to the layer. From right here, you may toggle the filter’s visibility, edit the filter settings, re-order the filters, and delete particular person results. You can too merge down all filters to recreate a damaging workflow.

Be aware that that is solely an early implementation, and far work stays to be performed for a full-featured model of non-destructive modifying. We are going to proceed to refine the present options for the three.0 launch based mostly on consumer testing and suggestions, and prolong them additional afterwards.
The interface itself is just not how we envision this characteristic ideally and a primary
specification draft was layed out
for a way more built-in workflow.

The beneath screenshot is a mockup from this primary specification which might present
layer results inside the primary layer listing, sharing the identical “eye” and “lock”
buttons, but additionally with their very own simply editable masks:

However creating this new interface might be its personal problem so we determined
to delay it to after GIMP 3 launch and to suggest this early implementation at first.

Please share your ideas on the discussion forums and issue tracker!

Font Dealing with Enhancements

Idriss Fekir, one other GSoC 2023 scholar, has been working with long-time developer Liam Quinn to enhance how GIMP handles fonts. Plenty of this work was inside to enhance GIMP’s capacity to deal with future font and textual content updates. Among the extra seen modifications embrace:

• GIMP not depends on font names being distinctive to differentiate between them. This implies it gained’t append “#1”, “#2” and so forth however as a substitute maintain the unique names within the font choice listing. Regardless of the obvious title conflict, each identically named font will now work correctly.

• GIMP can now load fonts utilizing customized kinds (bypassing Pango which is unable
  to load them).

• We will now load extra varieties of fonts than earlier than. In circumstances the place we don’t help a font but (or the font is non-existent), we will higher detect this and fall again to a default font. This additionally improves help when loading an .xcf file created on one other pc to completely different fonts obtainable.

• On Home windows, we pressure the Pango backend to at all times use anti-aliasing. This improves the readability of menu textual content on that working system, particularly with a darkish theme.

• The XCF-saving code now shops font data far more precisely which
  helps to keep away from loading the flawed font when reopening some XCF.

• Alignment of textual content in textual content layers for RTL languages is now extra in step with
  the way it works in different software program (akin to LibreOffice or Scribus).

These modifications are quite a bit much less flashy comparatively to a few of the different options and
subsequently could really feel much less essential, but they’re truly the inspiration work on
making textual content dealing with much more dependable in GIMP. We’re envisionning a future
the place textual content modifying might be easier whereas far more highly effective and featureful (in
specific OpenType options are a few of the massive enhancements we hope to get ultimately).

Auto-Increasing Layers

The third GSoC venture final summer time by scholar Shubham Daule introduced an extended requested characteristic – auto-expanding layers! Brush instruments now have a further “Increase Layers” choice. When checked, portray previous the layer boundaries will trigger them to routinely increase so that you don’t must handle the layer dimension your self. If you wish to increase the layer past the present dimension of the canvas, you’ll have to additionally examine the “Present All” choice within the View menu.

The Increase Layers choice additionally has extra settings when chosen. You may resolve how a lot you need the layer boundaries to increase by each time the comb reaches them. There are additionally choices to specify how the brand new areas of the layer and layer masks needs to be crammed in when expanded.

New Snapping Choices

New contributor mr. improbable developed two new choices for aligning layers on the canvas. With “Snap to Bounding Packing containers” enabled, dynamic guides will now present when the layer you’re shifting is aligned with the middle or sides of others. The energetic layer may even snap to these boundaries to help you with arranging them correctly. The second choice, “Snap to Equidistance”, lets you snap between three layers which can be equidistant from every different.

Themes

We continued to enhance the consumer interface and magnificence for this launch. One of many largest enhancements was coping with “system theme leaks”. There are kinds that weren’t particularly outlined in our themes, thus permitting completely different techniques to produce their very own (usually conflicting) kinds. With the assistance and suggestions of a number of contributors and customers, we’ve made loads of progress in defining these kinds so that everybody has a constant expertise!

Lately Jehan labored on re-organizing and simplifying our theme system. In previous growth variations we had 5 completely different themes: Default, Grey, System, Darker, and Compact (Every with mild and darkish choices). These have been simplified into the System theme and a single Default theme with three attainable states – mild, darkish, and grey. Equally, our 4 separate icon themes have been condensed into the Legacy set and a Default with Shade and Symbolic choices. We predict these modifications will scale back consumer confusion and make it simpler for them to seek out their most well-liked interface look.

As well as, on Home windows the primary titlebar (and most dialog title bars) now regulate to mild or darkish mode relying on the chosen theme.

Welcome Dialog

The Welcome Dialog has been expanded to supply fast entry to a variety of helpful options and choices. There are actually 4 new sections:

• Personalize: There are a number of customization choices that require you to dig by the Choice Dialog to vary. Now from this web page you may simply change the colour and icon themes, the consumer interface language and font dimension, and OS-specific settings.

• Create: This web page exhibits your eight most not too long ago opened photos and lets you rapidly reopen them. There are additionally buttons to create a brand new picture or load an present one. As with different applications, you may set this display screen to routinely seem when GIMP begins for instant entry to those options.

• Contribute: We consolidated a few of the some ways you could be concerned in GIMP’s growth on this web page. There are direct hyperlinks to report bugs, write code, help with translation or donate financially.

• Launch Notes: Initially these have been proven on the decrease half of the Welcome web page. Now now we have a full tab devoted to them for simpler studying.

File Codecs

As in different releases, now we have made enhancements to present file codecs and added import and export help for some new ones.

DDS

A brand new contributor Stayd has been working with developer Jacob Boerema to make many enhancements to the DDS plug-in. As a begin, the import features have been written to be easier and simpler to increase sooner or later. Among the different extra updates embrace:

• Loading 16 and 32 bits per channel RGBA DDS photos is now attainable.

• The Catmull-Rom cubic filter has been added for mipmap era, and all mipmap era calculations are carried out at 32-bit precision.

• DDS photos within the R8G8, R16, and R16G16 codecs can now be loaded as effectively.

• An choice to flip DDS photos vertical on import was added to reflect the present export choice, as some sport photos retailer their information this means.

GIF

Previously, overwriting a GIF somewhat than exporting would at all times convert it right into a single body picture. Now we examine to see if the GIF is an animation on load, so it should keep that means when overwritten.

HEIF and JPEG–XL

Each plug-ins now use their respective libraries (libheif and libjxl) to load metadata. Consequently, now we have eliminated our customized code to interpret the picture orientation and depend on the data provided from the library as a substitute.

OpenEXR

OpenEXR permits for channels to have customized names moreover the colour kind. In these circumstances we now deal with any single channel picture with an unconventional title as grayscale. On import, we additionally show a notification in order that customers are conscious of the conversion.

PDF

The “Layers as Pages” export choice now works even when there may be solely a single layer group. Beforehand this selection was not obtainable, because the plug-in solely checked if there was a couple of “layer” with out contemplating if it was a layer group with a number of sub-layers.

PNG

Secure-to-copy PNG chunks are actually preserved on import and included within the exported picture. Moreover, an often-reported concern with exporting clear listed PNGs has been fastened. Now the exported listed colours needs to be displayed accurately.

PSD

Jacob Boerema continued his work to enhance the PSD plug-in. Along with bug fixes akin to correcting the layer order on import, he additionally clarified the export warning on layer mode compatibility between GIMP and Photoshop.

PSP

The Paintshop Professional plug-in now helps importing extra options from the venture file, such because the ICC shade profile, guides, grids, and the energetic choice from when the file was saved. The ZDI–CAN-22096 and ZDI–CAN-22097 safety vulnerabilities have been additionally patched on this launch.

New picture format helps: Farbfeld, Esm Software program PIX, HEJ2

We not too long ago added import and export help for Farbfeld, an sRGB picture format meant to be straightforward to parse, pipe, and compress externally.

We additionally added import solely help for the next new file codecs:

• Esm Software PIX: A modified JPEG format used completely by the Esm Software program firm to retailer their custom-made photos. This was applied in response to a bug report that confused this format with our present Alias PIX picture help.

• HEJ2: An addition to our present HEIF plug-in by contributor Daniel Novomeský which permits importing JPEG 2000 compressed photos.

New palette format help: Swatchbooker

Swatchbooker is a free/libre open supply software program that creates and converts shade palettes in quite a lot of codecs. Whereas the software program itself has not been up to date in a few years, its customized palette format .sbz is essentially the most complete of all those we at present help. Amongst its many options are permitting a number of shade mannequin definitions per palette entry, localizable names and descriptions, and help for per-entry ICC shade profiles.

Whereas engaged on our import help, we have been capable of contribute data that led to a bug fix in Krita’s help for Swatchbooker. It’s at all times nice when tasks can work collectively and assist every different!

Wayland Pill Pad Interactions

Lengthy-time GNOME contributor Carlos Garnacho added help for interacting with GIMP through pill pads. When a pill is plugged in, now you can assign completely different actions to the pill controls through the “Enter Machine” dialog underneath the Edit menu.

This work additionally concerned porting features to GTK 3, the GUI framework that GIMP is constructed on. Be aware that this characteristic is at present solely supported on Wayland.

API Updates

The Utility Programming Interface, for plug-in makers, is steadily being
reworked as a part of the GIMP 3 overhaul. A part of it’s that when colours are
concerned, we’re shifting the API to make use of GeglColor as a part of the extra normal
Space Invasion project. But it’s solely a small a part of
the entire API enhancements.

We’re additionally shifting in the direction of extra courses to signify the assorted assets
managed by GIMP (brushes, fonts, patterns, and so forth.) as a substitute of solely representing
these by names (which was a historic limitation whereas it’s completely
attainable for two useful resource makers to decide on the identical title and the actual fact is that we
see such circumstances within the wild — for example 2 fonts independently created could have
the identical title).

One other massive transfer is changing the GimpValueArray representing the ordered
arguments of a plug-in process by a GimpProcedureConfig which comprises
arguments by title as a substitute of by order. This enables far more semantic utilization of
plug-in procedures (particularly once they have lengthy listing of arguments) but additionally
will make it simpler to reinforce plug-ins sooner or later, with new or reordered
arguments with out creating new procedures as a result of the order and quantity arguments
matter quite a bit much less. It implies that including new arguments sooner or later gained’t break
present scripts relying on previous variations of those plug-ins anymore (plug-in
writers will nonetheless have to decide on applicable defaults for the brand new arguments in
order for this to be true, of course).

In parallel, we proceed to enhance the flexibility of computerized GUI creation given
to plug-ins, making creating dialogs easier than ever. This consists of (amongst
many different enhancements) a brand new kind of process argument named GimpChoice
which is a string listing of selections which could be exhibited to creators as
drop-down listing widgets in your plug-in dialog.

We’re planning to write down and launch tutorial for plug-in writers within the
Resource Development part of our
developer website in the identical time as GIMP 3
launch, or not lengthy after.

GEGL and babl

This launch of GIMP is accompanied by new releases of GEGL and babl, each of which help with the colour house invasion venture.

babl 0.1.108 brings a brand new babl_space_is_rgb perform to assist us instantly verify a shade house is RGB (somewhat than doing a number of exams to see if it’s not CMYK or grayscale). There have been additionally a number of enhancements to the construct course of and to the babl command-line interface software.

GEGL 0.4.48 supplies a number of updates to the GeglColor object which now helps a lot of GIMP’s shade operation. Particular enhancements embrace with the ability to instantly get and set CMYK shade values, in addition to assigning the colour house when setting RGB(A) colours.

A crash within the present gegl:voroni filter was fastened, and a long-standing bug with the gegl:dropshadow filter which prevented the impact from shrinking was corrected too.

Final however not least, a brand new gegl:shuffle-search filter was added to the workshop. It shuffles neighboring pixels to create a extra optimized dithering impact.

Launch stats

Aside from the primary model within the sequence (2.99.2), GIMP 2.99.18 is clearly the
largest replace in most numbers. Since 2.99.16:

• 238 stories have been closed as FIXED.
• 201 merge requests have been merged.
• 1358 commits have been pushed.
• 26 translations have been up to date: Basque, Belarusian, Brazilian Portuguese,
  Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese language (China), Danish, Esperanto, Finnish, Georgian,
  German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian Nynorsk,
  Persian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

60 folks contributed modifications or fixes to GIMP 2.99.18 codebase (order is
decided by variety of commits; some persons are in a number of teams):

• 23 builders to core code: Jehan, Alx Sa, Shubham, Jacob Boerema, Idriss
  Fekir, bootchk, Anders Jonsson, Carlos Garnacho, mr.improbable, Stanislav
  Grinkov, lillolollo, Øyvind Kolås, Sabri Ünal, programmer_ceds, Lukas
  Oberhuber, programmer-ceds, James Golden, Luca Bacci, Massimo Valentini, Niels
  De Graef, Zander Brown, psykose, sonia.
• 17 builders to plug-ins or modules: Jehan, Alx Sa, Jacob Boerema, bootchk,
  Anders Jonsson, Stayd, Zander Brown, Bruno Lopes, Daniel Novomeský, Sabri
  Ünal, programmer_ceds, Kamil Burda, Mark, Michael Schumacher, Stanislav
  Grinkov, programmer-ceds, sonia.
• 31 translators: Yuri Chornoivan, Martin, Ekaterine Papava, Luming Zh, Sabri
  Ünal, Anders Jonsson, Rodrigo Lledó, Jordi Mas, Alan Mortensen, Vasil Pupkin,
  Asier Sarasua Garmendia, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Boyuan Yang, Víttor Paulo Vieira
  da Costa, dimspingos, Alexander Shopov, Alexandre Prokoudine, Aurimas Černius,
  Balázs Úr, Marco Ciampa, Sveinn í Felli, Danial Behzadi, Ngọc Quân Trần,
  Jürgen Benvenuti, Piotr Drąg, Timo Jyrinki, Andre Klapper, Kristjan SCHMIDT,
  MohammadSaleh Kamyab, Rafael Fontenelle, Tim Sabsch.
• 9 useful resource creators (icons, themes, cursors, splash display screen, metadata…): Alx
  Sa, Jehan, Ferry Jérémie, Stanislav Grinkov, Anders Jonsson, Bruno Lopes,
  Jacob Boerema, Sabri Ünal, mr.improbable.
• 5 documentation contributors: Jehan, Bruno Lopes, Jacob Boerema, Alx Sa,
  Anders Jonsson.
• 14 construct, packaging or CI contributors: Jehan, Bruno Lopes, bootchk, Alx Sa,
  Zander Brown, Jacob Boerema, Jacob Boerema, Stayd, Carlos Garnacho, Heiko
  Becker, mr.improbable, Daniel Novomeský, U-YGGDRASILender, lillolollo.

Contributions on different repositories within the GIMPverse (order is decided by
variety of commits):

• babl 0.1.108 is product of 17 commits by 6 contributors: Jehan, Øyvind Kolås,
  John Marshall, Andre Klapper, John, sid.
• GEGL 0.4.48 is product of 77 commits by 20 contributors: Øyvind Kolås, Jehan,
  Anders Jonsson, Jacob Boerema, Yuri Chornoivan, Alan Mortensen, Sabri Ünal,
  Andre Klapper, Ekaterine Papava, Jan Tojnar, Jordi Mas, Luming Zh, Martin,
  Piotr Drąg, Víttor Paulo Vieira da Costa, Asier Sarasua Garmendia, Marco
  Ciampa, Rodrigo Lledó, dimspingos, woob.
• ctx had 308 commits since 2.99.14 launch by 1
  contributor: Øyvind Kolås.
• The gimp-macos-build (macOS packaging scripts) launch is product of 32 commits
  by 1 contributor: Lukas Oberhuber.
• The flatpak launch is product of 15 commits by 3 contributors: Jehan, Daniel
  Novomeský and Hubert Figuière.
• Our essential web site (what you’re studying proper now) had 31 commits since
  2.10.36 launch by 6 contributors: Jehan, Alx Sa, Sabri Ünal, Anders Jonsson,
  Bruno Lopes, Jonathan Demeyer.
• Our developer website had 30 commits since
  2.10.36 launch by 5 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Alx Sa, bootchk, Robin Swift.
• Our 3.0 documentation had 247 commits since
  2.99.16 launch by 17 contributors: Andre Klapper, Jacob Boerema, Yuri
  Chornoivan, Alx Sa, Jordi Mas, Alan Mortensen, dimspingos, Anders Jonsson,
  Boyuan Yang, Sabri Ünal, Víttor Paulo Vieira da Costa, Juliano de Souza
  Camargo, Rodrigo Lledó, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Marco Ciampa, Danial Behzadi, Emin
  Tufan Çetin.

Let’s not overlook to thank all of the individuals who assist us triaging in Gitlab, report
bugs and focus on attainable enhancements with us.
Our neighborhood is deeply grateful as effectively to the web warriors who handle our
varied discussion channels or social
community accounts akin to Ville Pätsi, Liam Quin, Michael Schumacher and Sevenix!

Be aware: contemplating the variety of elements in GIMP and round, and the way we
get statistics by git scripting, errors could slip inside these
stats. Be happy to inform us if we missed or mis-categorized some
contributors or contributions.

Staff information and launch course of

Entry rights to the git repository have been not too long ago given to Bruno Lopes (who has been very energetic bettering our construct course of and Home windows packaging).

A number of long run or current builders or packagers who began to contribute to
the brand new developer web site have been additionally given entry to the related git
repository.

Extra contributors are actually actively taking part to testing releases and
packaging, and that is the primary information for years which Jehan has not written
practically completely! Thanks quite a bit to Alx Sa (a.okay.a. Nikc or CmykStudent) for taking
up on collaborative information writing!

Clearly we’re consolidating day after day a stable core staff of contributors and
this exhibits in our launch course of having an increasing number of suggestions at every launch.

We’re additionally significantly glad and proud that the 4 GSoC tasks we had, since
we began once more subscribing to this mentoring program, have been all profitable and
ended up being merged to the primary code department inside half a yr at most after
the internship finish.

Round GIMP

Mirror Information

Since our last
news, a brand new
mirror has been
contributed to GIMP by:

• Sahil Dhiman, in Nürnberg, Germany, as a private venture.

This brings us to a complete of 46 mirrors everywhere in the world.

Mirrors are essential as they assist the venture by sharing the load for dozens of
1000’s of day by day downloads. Furthermore by having mirrors unfold throughout the
globe, we make sure that everybody can have quick obtain entry to GIMP.

GIMP on Home windows/ARM

Since our news for an experimental build on Windows for ARM 64-bit
architecture,
we acquired assist from Hernan Martinez, well-known contributor within the MSYS2
venture, who hosted our first ever CI runner for Home windows on Aarch64
structure. Although this was solely a brief setup (actually a construct machine
in somebody’s front room) till we get a extra steady state of affairs, we’re extraordinarily
grateful to Hernan who helped us make our second step on this platform (the
first step was performed by Jernej, who made our first experimental installer), make
certain our computerized construct course of labored there and extra.

Since then, we received the stabler state of affairs: Arm Ltd. themselves stepped up and
contributed formally 3 runners for our Steady Integration course of in
Gitlab! Arm Ltd. additionally sponsored a Home windows devkit to certainly one of our builders.

Whereas we nonetheless do contemplate this construct experimental, due to lack of testing
and since solely 2 contributors have a machine capable of run it proper now, the
largest blocker received eliminated and we’re glad to announce that our common
Home windows installer for GIMP 2.99.18 comprises GIMP for all 3 platforms (x86 32 and
64-bit, and now ARM 64-bit)!

Downloading GIMP 2.99.18

You will see all our official builds on GIMP official website
(gimp.org):

• Linux flatpaks for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• Common Home windows installer for x86 (32 and 64-bit) and for ARM (64-bit)
• macOS DMG packages for Intel {hardware}
• macOS DMG packages for Apple Silicon {hardware}

Different packages made by third-parties are clearly anticipated to observe
(Linux or *BSD distributions’ packages, and so forth.).

What’s subsequent

As now we have now entered a characteristic freeze, our focus has shifted to bug-fixing, clean-up, and getting ready for the primary 3.0 launch candidate.

We certainly suppose that this needs to be the final growth launch since no new
characteristic might be launched to any extent further, at the least GUI options (the API remains to be
evolving till the primary launch candidate). So what you see now could be mainly
what it is best to get in GIMP 3.0.0, feature-wise.

This is the reason we launched this model regardless that we all know it’s fairly unstable.
Now could be the time for final minute feedback! Additionally it’s the second to report and repair
bugs like there isn’t any tomorrow. We hope to have the ability to ship a RC1 quickly and it needs to be as bugless as attainable.

Our present expectation is to have the ability to launch GIMP for the upcoming Libre
Graphics Meeting in Might 9-12. To be
truthful, this isn’t a straightforward aim and subsequently we aren’t certain if we will make it.
What is bound is that even when we didn’t handle this on time, it shouldn’t
occur too lengthy after.
Particularly we gained’t launch simply because we set a deadline. We wish to
present the very best expertise, which implies that if we uncover final minute blocker
bugs, we’ll delay the discharge till they’re fastened.

Don’t overlook you may donate and personally fund GIMP
developers, as a technique to give again and
speed up the event of GIMP.
Group dedication helps the venture to develop stronger! 💪🥳