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 👏🏼👏🏼
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.
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 ! have you considered submitting a PR so that this might get added to the GIMP default install ?
Thanks! Yes, I thought about it, although it would need some additional work as each in-built GIMP theme is structured to draw on common files, whereas mine are standalone. Totally possible though. Maybe when I have a complete set (Grey, Dark and Light), and if they're popular, I'll post something on the Gitlab and see what they say!
Great, I'm sure it will be well received. When I see the number of outside contributors that one day decide to fix something in Blender, and how many of em stick around, I think to myself, it's such a virtuous cycle. So many people seem to be piling on Gimp because of its UI (at least some of it is unwarranted and due to reputation I'm sure), I wouldn't understimate the potential impact of a "simple" theme.
Thanks, that's very encouraging of you :) This was the first time I'd ever made a theme (or even used CSS) so it was quite a long process. It's really nice to hear that someone else has found value in it.
You know just this afternoon I started wondering the same thing... It kind of blew my mind to think that all the vitriol online about the UI could just be a case of theming. No one is very specific about their complaints, so it hadn't crossed my mind.
I think if I get a good response to my dark theme too I will approach the devs and offer to help implement it as a core part of GIMP. BTW if you fancy testing it out let me know - I'd appreciate it getting tested on another system before I release it.
I haven't used Gimp regularly for a long time (Krita replaced it for me years ago). I tried your theme though, and it's way less busy than the default, which is nice. Removing the button embossing was a good call. Overall a little light for me..., but I don't do photography. I think the reduced contrast is generally soothing, but imho you may have overdone it. It kind of hurts in some places, notably on popups (ones that appear on hover), and on interface elements (horizontal lines) that separate different panels. I think it's important to keep some visible hierarchy in some of these places. That's mostly taste ofc
The more I look at it and switch between themes, the more it appears to me that another culprit is the difference between font size/weight and icon weight. Icons are super thick (all these plus and minuses in the toolbox look very crowded), whereas the text next to it is much smaller and thinner. Additionally there's very little to no padding on the text inside of value sliders, which contributes to the cramped feeling. Finally, widget outlines are very contrasted, super dark. But you removed those, so that's good
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!
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 might be dumb, but… it looks fine. I didn't really have other expectations besides it being functional and it functioned.
It worked for my small "projects" and I didn't have problems finding different features.
For me it's space efficient. What's up with all the white space everywhere else? Do you have the same issue with Blender?
no, I'd say Blender looks a lot better. I tried to find a roughly equivalent palette for comparison:
Hm not sure. I wasn't able to resize the color picker window. If I'd paint uvs by hand I wouldn't be able to pick subtle color differences with that size..
click the color preview, and you get a slightly bigger circle and you can also enter HSV and RGB values manually
White space is good
My default theme looks perfectly fine...
Edit: this is the default system theme on Windows, tried the other theme and it also looks awful.
dude, at least screenshot the same palette
That's just system default theme on Windows
it does look a little better, but I still think it's messy
Sorry for OT, but I love your username, yum!
hehe, nice to see people here actually recognize the food, not mistaken it as another thing, as it happened previously.
If you need a different GIMP UI, PhotoGIMP is a patch that may make it more useable for you.
https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
There's two screenshots. One is just promotional art.
The other one doesn't look much different to me than the single window mode Gimp introduced some time back.
Why aren't there any side by side screenshots pointing out what is different?
I think it is great that people made the effort for this, but like almost all github projects they really lack a good showcase of what they have.
This video gives the install overview, plus does a good comparision of stock and PhotoGIMP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3gCv_DlUZg
Wow, never knew this existed. I usually don't use gimp all that much compared to inkscape - so I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble...but this is very nice. I honestly don't know what they wouldn't pull these settings into the default gimp, even if only as an alternative skin option you can select.
The major drawback of gimp for many people is the interface, I think. That's why blender has really taken off since it's UI/UX update.
It wasn’t until a couple years ago that GIMP finally made single window mode the default. They are irrationally against fixing their UI.
No they are just severely limited by dev time (and even more by a lack of UI designers). They have less than a thousandth of Adobe's resources. Why don't you help improve it?
It's not dev time to fix UI complaints that have been made for 20 years. They have added hundreds of complex features in that time.
It was their ethos to not be Photoshop no matter how convoluted their alternative workflow needed to be.
If they really want to punch Adobe in the face they'd change their name to something not related to sexual kinks.
You're being downvoted but it's true. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is held back by its inappropriate name. Not only does it have several problematic connotations it is also just not a very flattering term in general. To describe something as gimped is not a compliment.
As techies we're sympathetic to the project and are likely to give funny or inappropriate names a pass, but think about how "normies" would see it, especially in e.g. a business or education context, with knowledge of the derogatory meaning(s) of the word.
Maybe BDSM? Bundled Digital Scalable Media-editor
There was a serious move/fork to call it GLIMPSE a while back, but it got abandoned. https://itsfoss.com/gimp-fork-glimpse/
The name is a bigger problem than many think IMO
I personally always rename the launch icon on machines just because so many people comment on seeing GIMP on the desktop or menu.
Look at git.
Huh?
gimp qt/imgui port when
Spirituality it's probably krita. Though they have different focuses in mind. Krita is very much more oriented to painting etc.
I'd use krita if there was a "editing" toggle that switches it to a GIMP-like interface, since I never really do digital art
I do have friends that love krita, though
Krita has some features I wish gimp had and vice versa. And I absolutely do use krita for editing sometimes. At this point 30 years of familiarity with gimp gets in it's way a bit. But I'm glad we have both.
Though if GIMP ever switched to QT that would be nuts. Once the reason and naming influence for the GTK behind GNOME. Now an almost secondary and separate concern left so far behind the rest of the suite. Gtk 5 is in planning and gimp just managed to get to 3 after a decade of hard work and planning. Though a lot of that was back end code. Not really UI or elements of. I've only dabbled a bit in GTK and QT over the years. I'm not sure if there would be much reason to switch toolkits. Though easy effects did.
They could call it QIMP and release QtTK and make Gnome switch to Qt and rename to QNOME 😍
I think the GTK guys learnt their season about smashing an API. Apparently from GTK3 to GTK4 is much better.
Though of course, next might be a fresh batch of developers thinking backwards compatibility is just holding them back. GTK is far from the only place this happens.