Software Update: GIMP 2.99.10

Version 2.99.10 of the open source photo editing program GIMP has been released, a development version that will eventually lead to version 3.0. The name GIMP is an abbreviation for “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” The software is available for various operating systems, including Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Solaris. However, due to a lack of manpower, the development of the macOS version is lagging somewhat behind. In version 3.0, it will transition to GTK3, xcf files can now be larger than 4GB and can use multicore processors more efficiently. The release notes for this release can be found below.

Development version: GIMP 2.99.10 Released

GIMP 2.99.10 is once again a pretty massive step in our development plans toward GIMP 3.0. We redesigned some core concepts of GIMP (“linked layers”, item locks’ GUI, dynamics switch), substantially improve the new API further into releasable state, babl and GEGL gets crazy optimizations going on, macOS and Wayland get more love, all the while improving file formats… And more! The below report will go through the most interesting changes:

• Redesigned Core Features
  • “Linked layers” superseded by “layer sets”
  • Item locks redesigned
  • Enabling/Disabling dynamics simplified
• New Core Features
  • New option in “Line Art” mode or bucket fill tool
  • Welcome Dialog
• Going further with our compact slider widget
• Official Plugins
  • PSD
  • JPEG-XL
  • Microsoft Windows Cursor (.cur)
  • Screenshot
  • HEIF
  • Deprecating help-browser and webpage plug-ins
• Build and documentation
  • Icon theme handling and refactoring
  • Clang-format check in Continuous Integration
  • Tool to bisect-test with older versions of flatpak
  • New contributor documentation
• Improved API for plugins
• Wayland and macOS support
• babl and GEGL
  • Automatic LUT creation for conversions in babel
  • SIMD builds for x86_64 and ARM neon (ctx, babl and GEGL)
  • Other improvements

To get a more complete list of changes, you should refer to the NEWS file or look at the commit history†