GIMP is a program for editing digital images in the form of bitmaps, both drawings and photographs. It is a free and open program.
Few days ago the release of the new version of GIMP 2.99.16 was announced, which continues the development of the functionality of the future stable branch of GIMP 3.0 , in which the transition to GTK3 was made.
In this new release that is presented from GIMP 2.99.16 user interface offers a way to combine the menu bar with the window title, which saves vertical space on the screen. When enabled, client-side decoration is applied to windows. Enabling the option also makes the menu visible in full screen mode.
In addition to this, it also highlights the work on moving the code base from using the GTK2 library to GTK3 and using the new CSS-like styling system used in GTK3 is officially complete.
Another of the changes made in the move to GTK 3 was in the class GtkAction used in GIMP to process hotkeys, buttons and menus was deprecated in the GTK3 branch in favor of the shortened version of GAction in the GLib library, it was replaced with the GimpAction plugin, which implements the lost functionality. Required for GIMP based on GAction.
On the other hand, it is mentioned that The ability to bind several different keyboard shortcuts to a single action has been implemented. For example, a new feature allows combinations like Ctrl + 1 to account for pressing "1" on both the top row of numbers and the side number block, as well as support for specialized individual keys available on some keyboards, such as Copy, Cut, and Paste.
In the dialog box "search by actions", display of action-related menu items is implemented, allowing people who are used to the menu structure to better navigate when choosing actions. Added a button to display the help section guide for the selected action.
It is also highlighted that the ability to easily integrate third-party modules with filters into the menu has been implemented, which does not require the creation of separate plugins. Now it is enough for the developer of the filter to define the properties of the operation, and the components for integration with the GIMP interface will be automatically generated based on it. For example, you can now use the GEGL key "gimp:menu-path" to add an operation to a menu. Also implemented support for showing external filters when searching for actions (dialog displayed by pressing "/"), regardless of adding a filter to the menu.
The “Align and Distribute” tool, redesigned in the latest version, implements the ability to apply the “Only Layer Contents” option not only to the target objects, but also to the reference object being snapped to.
The Transformations tool provides the ability to select a transformation matrix in a dialog box that is displayed directly on the canvas, making it easy to copy the transformation matrix for use in other programs after testing them in GIMP.
In addition to that, we can also find that added the ability to import and export clipped paths to PSD files. When importing PSD files, if GIMP does not have certain features available in the imported file, a warning is provided listing those features. Added the "file-psd-load-metadata" procedure to allow other plugins to use the PSD plugin to load metadata in Photoshop format, for example such metadata can be included in TIFF and JPEG files.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- The “Show editor on canvas” option has been added to the Text tool.
- Improved dialogs for filling and drawing a selection path or border.
- Improved handling of metadata in JPEG files.
- Renamed the setting related to 4:2:2 color subsampling.
- For the JPEG-XL format, initial support for exporting using the CMYK color model has been added.
- Work continued on improving the API for plugin development.
- Improved plugin localization capabilities.
- The dark theme, which was perceived by some as too dark, has been redesigned. Moved the old dark theme to a separate “Darker” theme.
If you are interested in being able to know more about it about this new released version, you can check the details In the following link.
How to install GIMP on Linux?
For those who are interested in being able to install this new version of GIMP on their systems, They should only have the support to be able to install applications from Flatpak.
Just run the following command to install the application on your systems:
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
Yes already have GIMP installed by this method, they can update it by running the following command:
flatpack update
When you run it, you will be shown a list of the applications installed by Flatpak that have an update. To proceed, just type "Y".