Photoshop FOSS alternative GNU Image Manipulation Program 3.0 nearly here

Nearly 21 years since version 2.0

Version 3.0 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is nearly ready for release. It has important new and long-awaited abilities – and you can try it now.

GIMP 3.0 has reached Release Candidate 1, meaning that it's almost ready for its first major version update in 20 years. GIMP 2.0 appeared in March 2004, and GIMP 1.0 back in 1998.

Development has been slow: The Register reported on version 2.99.8 over three years ago, and celebrated its quarter century in 2020 – so we won't recap the full history again.

Originally the General Image Manipulation Program, later renamed the GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP is a very influential app in the FOSS world. It started out as the work of two Berkeley student programmers: Spencer Kimball wrote most of the editor, while roommate Peter Mattis mostly built the GIMP Toolkit, Gtk, which is now the basis of the GNOME desktop – as well as Xfce, MATE, Budgie, and the bulk of graphical Linux apps today. Gtk has long left its progenitor behind and is now up to Gtk 4, but GIMP 3 uses Gtk 3.

GIMP 3 acquiring a screenshot of itself, in meta-ironic fashion - click to enlarge

The Reg FOSS desk is very much not a graphics guru, and all we ever use GIMP for is resizing, cropping, and converting images. This version revamps several core features we've never seen or touched, so we will leave it to you, dear reader, to decide on their value.

Layer handling has been rewritten: layers now automatically resize, and layer effects are now non-destructive, which is a big deal to image editors because it means you're not changing the layer in the original file and you revert to it at any time. So you can fix it 2,000 incremental changes later when the undo function just won't play ball.

Color space handling has also been reworked, and now the program only converts colors when it must; it should therefore be better for work targeted at print reproduction, which was a weakness in older versions, especially compared to its commercial rival Photoshop. It now has better font management, snapping is more flexible, and stroke management is better.

If you haven't looked at it in a few years, it's simpler than it was: all of those floating palettes are now combined into a single window, and there's also a much-improved welcome screen to help you get started. On Unity, it uses the global menu bar, but you can also optionally combine the title and menu bars, if you prefer that sort of thing. We wish more apps made that an option: we can't abide Client-Side Decorations (CSD) ourselves.

The UI simplification was much needed, and we're happy to see that the original GIMP has outlasted its offshoots GIMPshop and that app's successor GIMPHOTO. MacOS offshoot Seashore is still around, though.

Since this is a test release, it's quite possible there will soon be newer RCs. Don't expect to see this in a stable distro yet. We suggest installing it using a package manager that will let you easily uninstall it again: there is a snap package (look under Channels for preview/stable 3.0.0-RC1) and a Flatpak package (instructions on the development page). There are Windows and macOS downloads available as well. ®