7 ms·

Gimp 2.9.2 Released

182 points by renlinx 11y ago

hunvreus 11y ago
My main issue with Gimp was and still is the user experience. Every year I try and get back to using it, and every year I realize it doesn't compare to things like Sketch, Acorn or Adobe's suite. That's honestly the only reason I am still using MacOS.
- unixhero 11y ago
  Try Krita, friend
  - stonith 11y ago
    I found Krita didn't work very well on OSX when I tried it this week. There was about 100ms of lag when drawing using the default brush on a blank canvas which is pretty unusable. Disappointing since I really like it on Windows. At least there's pixelmator I guess.
    - pzone 11y ago
      Krita developers are working on improvements to the Mac OS port, keep an eye out for 3.0 and 3.1 come out in the next few months.
- Ralfp 11y ago
  There are also Affinity's Photo and Design apps for Mac that are very promising.
dchest 11y ago
It's still 2.8.16 in the Downloads section for me.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- KhalilK 11y ago
  Here you go http://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/ http://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/ It's a development release so it was in the Development snapshots section.
  - dchest 11y ago
    Thanks! There's no osx folder, so I guess there are no OS X binaries for development snapshots.
    - prokoudine 11y ago
      Not yet.
- foldr 11y ago
  2.9.x are development releases.
Drdrdrq 11y ago
Great, lots of new features. But the crucial thing for me is still marked "wontfix": allow saving to external formats directly. I often open some png or jpeg, edit it and want to save it. But no, I have to export it, confirm that I want to overwrite the file I am editing, and then confirm that I don't want to save to .xcf before closing file or Gimp. Infuriating. It makes me want to fork it just fix this nonsense, but I doubt anyone would want to go into trouble to install my fork. If gimp team don't want to change default behaviour they could at least add a setting to .gimprc: insane_export_behaviour=off. I know I would use it.</rant>
- prokoudine 11y ago
  If that is your primary use case, all you need to do is to assign Ctrl+S to Overwrite command instead. Boom, you got your saving back.
  - Shog9 11y ago
    And assuming you have dynamic keyboard shortcuts turned on (and why wouldn't you? Best thing ever.) this is about as painless as it gets.
    - prokoudine 11y ago
      Not really, no. I just use Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts to configure GIMP, since it doesn't happen very often. (I didn't assign Ctrl+S to Overwrite for myself though, I like the new behaviour.)
- mayank 11y ago
  I'm using 2.8.10, and this behavior seems fixed. If you open a JPEG or PNG, there's now a menu option in File called "Overwrite file.jpg". If you do an export, this menu option is replaced with "Export to file.jpg" that repeats your last export without a dialog box. The shortcut is Ctrl+E.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
On that topic I would be curious what people use on mac other than photoshop for both Gimp and Inkscape. The best I found so far is Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer but while they are superior than Gimp and Inkscape in many regards, they are also lacking in others :(
- jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
  Not quite a replacement but I use Sketch for Mac. I really like it.
  - jordanfish 11y ago
    Same - recently began using using Sketch & would recommend it highly
- cheez 11y ago
  Check out Acorn. Been using it for a few years now.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  You can use Gimp and Inkscape on a Mac too. Gimp works very well with it. Inkscape isn't quite as good as it runs with Ctrl-based bindings under X11.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    The experience of both is abysmal. Especially Inkscape is absolutely terrible and makes me angry every time I use it.
    - RBerenguel 11y ago
      I have Sketch and Affinity designer, and both are very good programs, but for raw SVG-ing (where I want full compatibility or anything similar) I still use Inkscape. It works, and works well, I'm not sure what your issues may be but I've been using it for, like, 8 years already (on Mac, I mean) and the latest versions are the best so far. Same for Gimp. I usually use Pixelmator, but Gimp is my second option (and depending on what I want to do, first option.) Keep in mind there are "native" apps now for both Gimp and Inkscape (i.e. no longer requiring X11 open and using C- bindings, I'm not sure if for Inkscape it's a fork or what, though, been a long time since I installed it). This has made working with them much better for me.
detaro 11y ago
good support for 16 bit editing, finally! Maybe I should try to come to terms with Gimp's GUI again...
- Zitrax 11y ago
  I guess it's obvious to some but I just recently learned about the single window mode even though I used gimp for years.
- illumen 11y ago
  This really is an amazing milestone. Almost a decade of work getting up to here! Well done Gimp devs, and everyone involved.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Finally catching up to Photoshop from 1992. Only 23 years behind!
  - unhammer 11y ago
    but going a bit beyond that as well ;) "Porting plugins to use GEGL buffers simply means that a filter can operate on whatever image data you throw it at, be it 8bit integer or 32bit per color channel floating point. Which is great, because e.g. Photoshop CS2 users who tried 32bit mode quickly learnt they couldn't do quite a lot, until at least CS4, released several years later." http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/gimp-2-9-2-released http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/gimp-2-9-2-released
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
trendnet 11y ago
>...such as non-destructive editing are planned to be exposed in GIMP at a later development stage (v3.2 and onwards) My grandchildren will probably see that.
tekni5 11y ago
Are there any famous/popular graphic designers that use GIMP?
- genug 11y ago
  Seems like an innocuous question. Why is it being downvoted?
imaginenore 11y ago
Finally, 16 bit per channel. It took freaking forever. Good job, guys.
- stuaxo 11y ago
  The trouble with changing the guts of an image program to a new system is not just building the new guts, but then you realise it affects just about everything. Source: I did the same thing on a much smaller open source project - not only was I still finding things broken up to 4 years later, but fairly early on, turned out I was the main person that understood the code after doing that, so became the maintainer too.
jrapdx3 11y ago
Using Gimp since the 90's, sure has changed for the better. Lately trying 2.9 on Linux, most recent versions seemed to have ironed out bugs pretty well and I can get work done with it. Under Windows, gimp 2.8 has been marginal at best, runs quite slowly, sometimes crashing or freezing, kind of frustrating to use. I downloaded the 2.9 development binary this morning. While still slow, seems a bit faster than 2.8, and didn't crash. More testing will show if this holds up. I know about people disfavoring workflow of gimp vs. photoshop, but given cost of latter, gimp remains a potentially worthy alternative. It depends on improving the efficiency of operations at least moderately, if so, it looks like the new version of gimp can succeed, even on Windows.
pcunite 11y ago
I'm still using 2.6.12 ... would like to try the new versions if they work well.
Eleutheria 11y ago
I love Gimp, I'm using it everyday. It took me some time to get used to it coming from PS but now I don't even remember how PS was, haven't used it in almost a decade since it was PS3 or something. Kudos to the Gimp developers and contributors.
phkahler 11y ago
IMHO they need to push 2.10 out quickly with no new features unless they are completely ready to go. Then I'd like to see GTK3 get done with Wayland support. At that point GIMP would finally have its internals up to date. Feature work should be a lot easier from there.
anonbanker 11y ago
ITT: People comparing gimp to Photoshop. I didn't see a mention of GEGL, which is the reason this release is so important. GEGL has been worked on for the better part of a decade now. it's finally being implemented. This is like Netscape 6 levels of big.
Patronus_Charm 11y ago
Is this program any good on OS X? I am curious if it truly is as useful as Photoshop. Thanks.
Corrado 11y ago
The two big things that I see in the release is GEGL support and better color management. The GEGL image process engine gives you lots of things but I think the most important is the ability to read and write 16/32bit per color channel data. I think this has been on everyones wish list for a long time. This release also upgrades to LittleCMS v2 providing much better color control and support for ICC v4 color profiles. :)
hnatt 11y ago
Installed only to check if they fixed the problem with font antialising. Unfortunately no - white text on black background still has a rainbow on its edges.

182 points by renlinx 11y ago

My main issue with Gimp was and still is the user experience. Every year I try and get back to using it, and every year I realize it doesn't compare to things like Sketch, Acorn or Adobe's suite. That's honestly the only reason I am still using MacOS.

unixhero 11y ago
Try Krita, friend
- stonith 11y ago
  I found Krita didn't work very well on OSX when I tried it this week. There was about 100ms of lag when drawing using the default brush on a blank canvas which is pretty unusable. Disappointing since I really like it on Windows. At least there's pixelmator I guess.
  - pzone 11y ago
    Krita developers are working on improvements to the Mac OS port, keep an eye out for 3.0 and 3.1 come out in the next few months.
Ralfp 11y ago
There are also Affinity's Photo and Design apps for Mac that are very promising.

dchest 11y ago

It's still 2.8.16 in the Downloads section for me.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
KhalilK 11y ago
Here you go http://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/ http://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.9/ It's a development release so it was in the Development snapshots section.
- dchest 11y ago
  Thanks! There's no osx folder, so I guess there are no OS X binaries for development snapshots.
  - prokoudine 11y ago
    Not yet.
foldr 11y ago
2.9.x are development releases.

Drdrdrq 11y ago

Great, lots of new features. But the crucial thing for me is still marked "wontfix": allow saving to external formats directly. I often open some png or jpeg, edit it and want to save it. But no, I have to export it, confirm that I want to overwrite the file I am editing, and then confirm that I don't want to save to .xcf before closing file or Gimp. Infuriating. It makes me want to fork it just fix this nonsense, but I doubt anyone would want to go into trouble to install my fork. If gimp team don't want to change default behaviour they could at least add a setting to .gimprc: insane_export_behaviour=off. I know I would use it.</rant>

prokoudine 11y ago
If that is your primary use case, all you need to do is to assign Ctrl+S to Overwrite command instead. Boom, you got your saving back.
- Shog9 11y ago
  And assuming you have dynamic keyboard shortcuts turned on (and why wouldn't you? Best thing ever.) this is about as painless as it gets.
  - prokoudine 11y ago
    Not really, no. I just use Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts to configure GIMP, since it doesn't happen very often. (I didn't assign Ctrl+S to Overwrite for myself though, I like the new behaviour.)
mayank 11y ago
I'm using 2.8.10, and this behavior seems fixed. If you open a JPEG or PNG, there's now a menu option in File called "Overwrite file.jpg". If you do an export, this menu option is replaced with "Export to file.jpg" that repeats your last export without a dialog box. The shortcut is Ctrl+E.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

On that topic I would be curious what people use on mac other than photoshop for both Gimp and Inkscape. The best I found so far is Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer but while they are superior than Gimp and Inkscape in many regards, they are also lacking in others :(

jeremy_wiebe 11y ago
Not quite a replacement but I use Sketch for Mac. I really like it.
- jordanfish 11y ago
  Same - recently began using using Sketch & would recommend it highly
cheez 11y ago
Check out Acorn. Been using it for a few years now.
0942v8653 11y ago
You can use Gimp and Inkscape on a Mac too. Gimp works very well with it. Inkscape isn't quite as good as it runs with Ctrl-based bindings under X11.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  The experience of both is abysmal. Especially Inkscape is absolutely terrible and makes me angry every time I use it.
  - RBerenguel 11y ago
    I have Sketch and Affinity designer, and both are very good programs, but for raw SVG-ing (where I want full compatibility or anything similar) I still use Inkscape. It works, and works well, I'm not sure what your issues may be but I've been using it for, like, 8 years already (on Mac, I mean) and the latest versions are the best so far. Same for Gimp. I usually use Pixelmator, but Gimp is my second option (and depending on what I want to do, first option.) Keep in mind there are "native" apps now for both Gimp and Inkscape (i.e. no longer requiring X11 open and using C- bindings, I'm not sure if for Inkscape it's a fork or what, though, been a long time since I installed it). This has made working with them much better for me.

detaro 11y ago

good support for 16 bit editing, finally! Maybe I should try to come to terms with Gimp's GUI again...

Zitrax 11y ago
I guess it's obvious to some but I just recently learned about the single window mode even though I used gimp for years.
illumen 11y ago
This really is an amazing milestone. Almost a decade of work getting up to here! Well done Gimp devs, and everyone involved.
jacobolus 11y ago
Finally catching up to Photoshop from 1992. Only 23 years behind!
- unhammer 11y ago
  but going a bit beyond that as well ;) "Porting plugins to use GEGL buffers simply means that a filter can operate on whatever image data you throw it at, be it 8bit integer or 32bit per color channel floating point. Which is great, because e.g. Photoshop CS2 users who tried 32bit mode quickly learnt they couldn't do quite a lot, until at least CS4, released several years later." http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/gimp-2-9-2-released http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/gimp-2-9-2-released

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

trendnet 11y ago

>...such as non-destructive editing are planned to be exposed in GIMP at a later development stage (v3.2 and onwards) My grandchildren will probably see that.

tekni5 11y ago

Are there any famous/popular graphic designers that use GIMP?

genug 11y ago
Seems like an innocuous question. Why is it being downvoted?

imaginenore 11y ago

Finally, 16 bit per channel. It took freaking forever. Good job, guys.

stuaxo 11y ago
The trouble with changing the guts of an image program to a new system is not just building the new guts, but then you realise it affects just about everything. Source: I did the same thing on a much smaller open source project - not only was I still finding things broken up to 4 years later, but fairly early on, turned out I was the main person that understood the code after doing that, so became the maintainer too.

jrapdx3 11y ago

Using Gimp since the 90's, sure has changed for the better. Lately trying 2.9 on Linux, most recent versions seemed to have ironed out bugs pretty well and I can get work done with it. Under Windows, gimp 2.8 has been marginal at best, runs quite slowly, sometimes crashing or freezing, kind of frustrating to use. I downloaded the 2.9 development binary this morning. While still slow, seems a bit faster than 2.8, and didn't crash. More testing will show if this holds up. I know about people disfavoring workflow of gimp vs. photoshop, but given cost of latter, gimp remains a potentially worthy alternative. It depends on improving the efficiency of operations at least moderately, if so, it looks like the new version of gimp can succeed, even on Windows.

pcunite 11y ago

I'm still using 2.6.12 ... would like to try the new versions if they work well.

Eleutheria 11y ago

I love Gimp, I'm using it everyday. It took me some time to get used to it coming from PS but now I don't even remember how PS was, haven't used it in almost a decade since it was PS3 or something. Kudos to the Gimp developers and contributors.

phkahler 11y ago

IMHO they need to push 2.10 out quickly with no new features unless they are completely ready to go. Then I'd like to see GTK3 get done with Wayland support. At that point GIMP would finally have its internals up to date. Feature work should be a lot easier from there.

anonbanker 11y ago

ITT: People comparing gimp to Photoshop. I didn't see a mention of GEGL, which is the reason this release is so important. GEGL has been worked on for the better part of a decade now. it's finally being implemented. This is like Netscape 6 levels of big.

Patronus_Charm 11y ago

Is this program any good on OS X? I am curious if it truly is as useful as Photoshop. Thanks.

Corrado 11y ago

The two big things that I see in the release is GEGL support and better color management. The GEGL image process engine gives you lots of things but I think the most important is the ability to read and write 16/32bit per color channel data. I think this has been on everyones wish list for a long time. This release also upgrades to LittleCMS v2 providing much better color control and support for ICC v4 color profiles. :)

hnatt 11y ago

Installed only to check if they fixed the problem with font antialising. Unfortunately no - white text on black background still has a rainbow on its edges.