Since 2006 we’ve been improving GIMP’s user interface with help from Peter Sikking and his team at man + machine interface works . Some of the best improvements in GIMP’s UI over past several years are the direct result of our collaboration. We are happy to announce that for the next 10 weeks Marinus Schraal is joining Peter Sikking to work on a concept of a new widget set for tools’ options in GIMP. The net outcome will be a functional spec for new UI elements that will be compact and easy to use. By the way, recently Peter did another GIMP related interaction design course [...]

Today at Libre Graphics Meeting 2012 in Vienna we announced that the development version of GIMP is now capable of processing images in 16bit and 32bit modes, integer or float at your preference. Transformation, painting and color adjustment tools will just work in higher bit depth precision modes. More than that, GIMP can load and save 16bit PNG images and save EXR and HDR files now. We also improved support for indexed images, so that you could finally paint over them with the Smudge tool or apply filters. There is still a lot of work left to do, and this is a great chance [...]

We are happy to announce immediate availability of GIMP 2.8 â€” a new stable version of GNU Image Manipulation Program that culminates 3.5 years of exciting work. With this version we are introducing some long-anticipated features such as layer groups, on-canvas text editing, advanced brush dynamics and the much desired optional single-window mode. We also started applying other important changes to the user interface that bring us closer to matching the product vision . For detailed information about changes since 2.6 please read the release notes . Source code is available for downloading from a plethora of mirrors, a build for Windows will soon be available, and we hope [...]

We are excited to announce that we have five students to work with us on improving GIMP as part of the Google Summer of Code 2012 program. All the students will be contributing to faster transition of GIMP to GEGL, our new advanced image core. The projects are: Maxime Nicco and hanslo will port GIMP filters to GEGL operations. Ville Sokk will port other GIMP features to GEGL. Isaac Wagner will create a GEGL-based node compositor that will serve as playground for GEGL development. Mikael Magnusson will create a Unified Transform tool. In the past years Google Summer of Code has proven to be a great source of contributions. [...]

In late 2007 we launched smooth transition to GEGL — a new advanced image processing core incepted by a team of Rhythm & Hues developers. For v2.6 we made an optional GEGL-based implementation of color adjustment tools, and for upcoming v2.8 we implemented optional projection rendering via GEGL. But nobody really had evaluated the amount of the work to be done in order to finalize this transition. Until just now. Five weeks ago Michael Natterer and Øyvind KolÃ¥s decided to finally work out the migration strategy. While working on that they found themselves doing the actual porting . So now about 90% of the GIMP application’s core [...]

We released new versions of GEGL and babl, quickly followed by the first release candidate of GIMP 2.8. GEGL 0.2.0 has some major improvements and breaks API/ABI compatibility with earlier versions for some very good reasons. Perhaps the most exciting change in GEGL is an initial support for GPU-side rendering and processing via OpenCL. Hardware acceleration makes it possible to leverage many operations to GPUs which can dramatically improve performance. The foundation for this feature was laid by Jerson Michael Perpetua as the primary objective of his GSoC2009 project. The second part of the project was done by Victor Oliveira during GSoC2011. Victor was [...]

GIMP has been accepted to Google Summer of Code 2012 program. This is a great chance for aspiring developers to get a good understanding of remote collaborative work and coincidentally help the project become an even better image editor. We put together a list of project ideas that you might like to have a look at. But you are also free to suggest your own idea. Here is some more essential info for potential students. If you are eligible for the program, please join the gimp-developer@ mailing list or the IRC channel to discuss your project idea. Student application period opens on March 26 and closes on [...]

We’ve just released GIMP 2.7.5, the last beta in the 2.7.x series. This version got various fixes and improvements, translation updates and a few minor features such as configurable default color of quick masks. Since this version GIMP is shipping with a revamped brush pack and a set of ca. 40 tools presets, mostly painting related. The work was done by Ramón Miranda (GIMP Paint Studio) and Guillermo Espertino. This particular change is a first major step in updating the default bundle of resources to match user expectations. For a complete list of changes since 2.7.4 please refer to the NEWS page, while the release [...]

On May 2–5 we are attending Libre Graphics Meeting 2012 , the annual conference for developers and users of free software for graphic design, photography and 3D modeling. The event is taking place in the beautiful city of Vienna, co-located with Linuxwochen. The conference started in 2006 as an extended version of our annual developers meeting where we met Scribus and Inkscape teams to figure out how we can make our software work better together. Since then LGM has become the premiere event of the year for everyone who cares about free graphics software. One of the achievements of the conference is OpenRaster, a raster [...]

GIMP 2.6.12 is a bug-fix release in the stable GIMP 2.6 series. Its purpose is mostly to wrap up all fixes that have piled up since 2.6.11 into a last release in the stable 2.6 series before we switch to 2.8. Please have a look at the NEWS file for a detailed list of changes. The source can be downloaded from http://ftp.gimp.org. Binary packages for various supported platforms should become available soon; please check the Downloads section. Just like you, we want to see v2.8 out in the wild as soon as possible, but there’s still a number of regressions that block this important [...]

We released GIMP 2.7.4 with minor improvements and bugfixes. Most improvements are related to user interface and usability, see here for detailed list of changes. Depending on amount of bugs we get reports on this could be the last version before 2.8 release candidates and 2.8 itself. The other good news is that between 2.7.3 and 2.7.4 Michael Natterer considerably improved GTK+ for Mac, so GIMP is finally going to be first class citizen on that platform. We also released new versions of GEGL and babl. Changes in babl are mostly improvements of the existing feature set, but GEGL got operations ported from GIMP filters [...]

Victor Oliveira, our GSoC2011 student, is going to continue his work on getting OpenCL support in GEGL for hardware accelerated rendering and computations. AMD got interested in the project and agreed to sponsor it. The plan is to implement GPU-side color conversions and compositing operations, as well as some basic filters. Victor is also planning to create a simple API for development of new OpenCL based filters for GEGL. Currently estimated deadline is March 2012. GIMP already has an optional GEGL based projection rendering as well as an experimental tool to test GEGL operations, so hopefully we are going to see some exciting [...]

Our mailing lists have moved to the GNOME list server. All previously subscribed users have automatically been added to the new lists. The old list mail addresses are no longer valid, please use the new ones from now – note that in addition to the changed domain, the list names got a “-list” appended to them. The subscription management pages are accessible via the following links: gimp-developer-list gimp-user-list gimp-docs-list gimp-web-list gegl-developer-list The list archives will be restored at gnome.org as soon as we get the files The gimp-announce, gimp-film, and gimp-win-user lists don’t exist any longer. [...]

The online docs and developer pages are available again:

Online Docs (docs.gimp.org)
Developer Pages (developer.gimp.org)

We managed to get FTP and Wiki back online:

FTP Downloads (ftp.gimp.org)
Developer Wiki (wiki.gimp.org)

Due to relocation onto a different server, the following services are currently not available:

Mailing lists (lists.xcf.berkeley.edu)
FTP Downloads (ftp.gimp.org)
Documentation (docs.gimp.org)
Developer website (developer.gimp.org)
Developer Wiki (wiki.gimp.org)

Google Summer of Code 2011 is over, and all of our students have successfully finished their respective projects. All of the code is available in Git repositories, but not all of it is going to be part of the next released versions of GEGL and GIMP. Here is why. Both new tools, Seamless Clone and Warp Transform , as well as new size entry widget are too late to become part of 2.8. We are planning to make them part of 2.10, when they are better tested for reliability and usability. The OpenCL project needs more work to become part of GEGL’s main development branch. [...]

We are pleased to announce availability of a new development version that brings us closer to GIMP 2.8. This version is packed with important new features and improvements. The most visible changes in 2.7.3 are the fully working single-window mode, including working session management, and the introduction of a new hybrid spinbutton/scale widget which takes less space in dockable dialogs. For a complete list of changes since 2.7.2 please refer to NEWS page, while the release notes summarize changes in the whole 2.7.x series. Please note that the whole 2.7.x series of versions is considered unstable and is not recommended for use in production even though [...]

While GEGL gradually replaces GIMP’s old core, it’s time for us to consider long-term strategy for improving performance. The trend these days seems to be a combination of multithreading, GPU-side processing and networks. Most of that can be handled thanks to OpenCL standard by Khronos Group. Back in 2009 we already had a Google Summer of Code project by Jerson Michael Perpetua who introduced basics of GPU-side rendering to GEGL. This year we have even more progress. Another GSoC student, Victor Oliveira, has been working on support for OpenCL in GEGL since late May. If you are interested in details, please read [...]

We are glad to announce that all of our Google Summer of Code students have passed midterm evaluation. All the code is being maintained in respective Git branches of GEGL and GIMP. As a reminder, this year Google Summer of Code is bringing us two new tools, Seamless Clone and Warp Transform, several GEGL operations, support for OpenCL based rendering in GEGL, and a new widget for size entry. We also reviewed projected date of GIMP 2.8 release, and it still looks like end of 2011. This version is going to introduce dramatic user interface improvements as well as a multitude of new [...]