The development team behind the popular open source image editing software GIMP has announced the general availability of the Release Candidate (RC) of the highly anticipated GIMP 3.0.
Featuring a highly refined interface, GIMP 3.0 brings huge improvements to color management, a stable public API that allows plugins and scripts to be ported from GIMP 2.10, support for loading layers from TIFF files saved in the Autodesk Sketchbook format, and support for 64-bit-per-pixel images for the BMP format.
GIMP 3.0 also promises improvements to non-destructive editing by introducing an optional “Merge Filters” checkbox at the bottom of NDE filters that merges the filter immediately after it is bound, along with non-destructive filters in layer groups and application of storing the filters in GIMP's XCF project files.
“This will allow us to update filters in the future without affecting the appearance of older files when they are opened. Additional work will be needed in GEGL to fully implement this feature, but this can be done after version 3.0 without affecting existing projects files,” the developers said.
Among other notable changes is the updated GIMP 3.0 user interface that allows using the mouse scroll wheel to rotate through different dialog tabs, GEGL and babl components have been updated with new features and many improvements such as Inner Glow, Bevel , GEGL Styles filters and some other plugins.
In addition to all this, GIMP 3.0 comes with a new logo, a new splash screen, improvements to the legacy icon theme to look better on HiDPI monitors, and the ability to export images with different settings while leaving the original image unchanged.
For more details, see new release announcement page.
You can try the GIMP 3.0 Release Candidate via Flatpak from here. If you are using GNOME or KDE Plasma, double-click the flatpak file and it will open with GNOME Software or Plasma Discover.
