GIMP 3.0 - a Milestone For Open-Source Image Editing

LWN: The long-awaited release of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) 3.0 is on the way, marking the first major update since version 2.10 was released in April 2018. It now features a GTK 3 user interface and GIMP 3.0 introduces significant changes to the core platform and plugins. This release also brings performance and usability improvements, as well as more compatibility with Wayland and complex input sources.

GIMP 3.0 is the first release to use GTK 3, a more modern foundation than the GTK 2 base of prior releases. GTK 4 has been available for a few years now, and is on the project's radar, but the plan was always to finish the GTK 3 work first. Moving to GTK 3 brings initial Wayland compatibility and HiDPI scaling. In addition, this allows for GIMP users to take advantage of multi-touch input, bringing pinch-to-zoom gestures to the program, and offering a better experience when working with complex peripherals, such as advanced drawing tablets. These features were not previously possible due to the limitations of GTK 2.

A secondary result of the transition to GTK 3 is a refreshed user interface (UI), now with support for CSS themes included. In this release, four themes are available by default, including light, dark, and gray themes, along with a high-contrast theme for users with visual impairments. Additionally, this release has transitioned to using GTK's header bar component, typically used to combine an application's toolbar and title bar into one unit. To maintain familiarity with previous releases, however, GIMP 3.0 still supports the traditional menu interface.

GTK3

[Blymie]

Ah, excellent gtk3!

Look for a massive amount of whitespace for absolutely no reason, an almost incomprehensible task for end users to theme, and just general weirdness.

Re:

[markdavis]

>"Ah, excellent gtk3! Look for a massive amount of whitespace for absolutely no reason, an almost incomprehensible task for end users to theme, and just general weirdness."

Exactly. Thank you. It is nice to hear from those who also find GTK3 to be a massive step backwards in so many ways. I shutter to think about what GTK4 "improvements" are coming (something I haven't been forced to deal with yet).

Hoping

[markdavis]

>"To maintain familiarity with previous releases, however, GIMP 3.0 still supports the traditional menu interface."

Whew. I really don't want to adjust to but so many changes at once. This has been a big disconnect with many things (looking at you GNOME and GTK) where developers make radical changes just "because". I HATE hamburger menus, menus in title bars, menu options lacking icons (will GIMP 3 even be able to have menu icons, because they destroyed that in GTK 3), menus that fade in and out or scroll in and out (wasting my time and slowing remote displays), disappearing scroll bars, scroll bars that don't indicate size of view, etc.

Gimp really boggles my mind

[rsilvergun]

Yeah it's behind Photoshop in some ways but it could absolutely hang with it. It's along with open office and Linux in general one of the greatest success stories. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of software for free.

If you go down to South America you will find people doing absolutely amazing things with it because they can't afford the Adobe licenses and Gimp is right there. I came across those guys when I was buying a drawing tablet as a gift for a buddy of mine.

Re:

[HiThere]

FWIW, I prefer the inteface The GIMP had a decade ago to the current one. This causes me to wonder if the next will be even worse. Inkscape had a better interface then too.

Re:

[ThePyro]

It's the simple things. I had to update GIMP recently, and the UI changes were so significant that I ended up having to Google search just for how to customize the brush size. One of my most commonly used features was just hard to find.

I'll give the new UI a try, but it's rather painful to throw years of experience out the window. It'd be easier to justify if I used the software more often, but I don't... I pull it out, rarely, for "quick" jobs, and it sucks having to relearn stuff in that context. I was ex

the important part

[drinkypoo]

Besides UI improvements of course, the big important part of GIMP 3.0 is non-destructive editing. FTFA:

A major focus of this release is greater integration with the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL), first introduced in 2000 for the purpose of improving GIMP's image-processing capabilities through a scene-graph-based architecture. As part of this effort, there have been numerous optimizations to GIMP's core and to its standard plugins. In tandem with memory management and multi-threading improvements, these changes should bring significant speed boosts when applying filters and effects, even on larger images.

GEGL allows image-processing operations to be chained together in such a way that the original image data is preserved, along with a record of every edit. This is referred to as non-destructive editing, and GIMP 3.0 is the first stable release of the project to make this workflow available, though there is still more work to be done. Users can apply filters and effects to any layer without altering the original image. As a result, effect parameters can be changed even after they've been applied. This change removes the need to perform an undo any time a filter or effect does not have the desired result. Filters, and any plugins that use GEGL operations, now offer real-time previews.

This is the core of why it has historically been far easier to achieve specific ends with Photoshop than GIMP. Photoshop has offered non-destructive editing through its "layer effects" literally since before it was called Photoshop, but this became a main focus around version 2.5 and it has been responsible for much of its success. Being able to fiddle these effects means not having to re-do things if you want to make a change to something you did in the middle of your work. Some of what people mistake for UI superiority in Photoshop was actually that it had this functionality to even have a UI for. Implementing it as effects for layers was almost the only reasonable way to do it, what else do you attach them to?

Not previously possible?

[Viol8]

"These features were not previously possible due to the limitations of GTK 2."

GTK is just a wrapper on top of Xlib so code around it if it doesn't do what you need.

Re:

[Errol backfiring]

The writer of the article is probably not aware that GTK stands for Gimp Tool Kit.

Re:

[laughingskeptic]

Layout lives at the GTK layer so you can only "code around" the limitations of GTK by directly using Xlib through creating new Gtk.Widgets that provide new get_request_mode functions so that layout is not wonky. This approach is a slippery slope and can lead to the custom Gtk.Widgets being a major part of the effort and a big distraction to the project's feature objectives.

Sounds... Pointless

[Baron_Yam]

The goal for development should be better tools and a more intuitive interface to access those tools.

If you're worried about themes, presumably your product is otherwise perfect because a theme for your image editor should be among the very last things you care about.

I'm pretty sure Gimp is not perfect.