GIMP 3.2 released
gimp.org164 points by F3nd0 2 hours ago
164 points by F3nd0 2 hours ago
Being able to scale an image without losing quality is going to be handy. I always found it odd that scaling down an image now and then scaling it back to its original size 2 seconds later with the same tool resulted in a loss of quality and having to delete the layer, then re-import the image to get the original quality back.
This plugin https://github.com/LinuxBeaver/Gimp_Layer_Effects_Text_Style... also makes adding text effects with GIMP pretty good. This is unrelated to 3.2 but turned out to be a necessity for me.
It's because each transform was "destructive" (like filters use to be by default). What link & vector layers do instead is store a transform matrix, so each transform just updates the matrix instead of actually re-rasterizing the layer each time.
We were hoping to expand that feature to all layer types for 3.2, but we ran out of time to properly test it for release. It'll like be finished for the next minor release.
It sounds like you are a gimp developer. Curious about the use of AI to work on it. Do the gimp devs use AI to write code?
I can't speak for all of us, but generally no (in terms of GenAI at least). There are concerns about generated code not being compatible with GPL, and honestly a lot of the drive-by GenAI coded merge requests tend to not work.
I see you are getting downvoted but I don't blame you for this question. I've been curious about what developers of established products are doing with LLM assisted coding myself.
Like most of us, they're certainly using ai-assisted auto-complete and chat for thinking deep. I highly doubt they're vibe coding, which is how I interpret the parent's question and probably why they are being down voted.
> I always found it odd that scaling down an image now and then scaling it back to its original size 2 seconds later with the same tool resulted in a loss of quality
Maybe it's because I grew up with Paint Shop Pro 6 and such, but that seems completely normal and expected to me
Nice - all actions performed on a layer should retain a hidden "raw original" so we get non-destructive transforms.
One of the first things I install on any new computer is Gimp. Thank you to all involved in the Gimp project.
Does anyone else find non-destructive editing kinda unintuitive?
I get the practical benefits of it, but it feels shoehorned in to an interface for doing destructive edits. Chained edits frequently interact in ways that confuse/surprise me.
I think I'd rather do non-destructive edits via some sort of node-editor interface. (And to be honest most of the things I use GIMP for don't need non-destructive editing in the first place)
The current non-destructive UI is a bit of a compromise - we can't really mix layers with NDE filters in the layer dock until GTK4 (from what I understand), so the pop-up menu is what we had to work with.
You can check "Merge filter" at the bottom of the filter dialogue though, and it will automatically merge the filter like in 2.10 (and the setting is remembered going forward)
"When I was a kid, when we shrunk a 200x200 image down to 100x100 we lost information forever, and we liked it that way. It was a simple time. A predictable time."
This is one of those things I'd think geeks would geek out about, as nondestructive edits mean the steps to construct an image are stored, not just the final image—kinda like a monad in FP.
Love GIMP. Always capable of doing anything I need done with raster images or even PDFs. Lately I've been opening PDFs and lightening the pages so that they can be printed without wasting a bunch of toner on backgrounds that are meant to be white but were scanned in as a light grey.
I assume you don’t do this manually and you’re doing some kind of scripting, can you describe your process?
The lack of GenAI integration is actually refreshing
Do you suggest using manual brushes instead of content-aware fill, or am I supposed to not want to retouch the images in the way that GenAI makes so quickly and easily? My argument is that applications probably should provide useful tools for solving practical problems, regardless of their implementation details.
Can I finally Ctrl+s jpeg image? And no, export is not enough because first time it will ask for for path and compression level which it already knows. I just want to Ctrl+s and be done.
It seems like you can assign this action to Ctrl + S, yes. See here:
Edit → Keyboard Shortcuts → file → Overwrite […]
It used to be even simpler, though I am sure it caused all sorts of problems: for any Gtk+ program, if you hovered over a menu and pressed a new key combination, it would reassign the shortcut for that menu to what you just pressed. You still had to turn it on, and it was an amazing feature, but you'd occasionally reassign something you did not want to :)
Almost all programs treat the “Save” operation as something used with the native format, in this case XCF files. These preserve things like layers, etc. JPG and other formats are exports because after you close the file you can’t get all that stuff back when you reopen it.
File - Overwrite file, that's been there for a while. It can be turned into a hotkey, it's unmapped by default, and I don't think that'd change nor should it change, given how user hostile that'd be, the long history of how it works in editors like that, and with how they lean towards non-destructiveness of it all. Also, that just sounds like perhaps a simpler editor would be a better fit, like Paint.
I use Gimp pretty sporadically but the latest UI refresh (I’m guessing introduced in 3.0?) completely baffles me.
It might just be that it’s better tailored for graphic designers, which I’m clearly not. But now I can’t even figure out how to draw a square on screen. Let along anything clever.
Hi! What was the last version of GIMP that you used before 3.0?
We get an equal amount of "GIMP's UI never changes!" and "You changed too much of the UI in the latest version", so it's difficult sometimes to figure out the specific issues.
Select a rectangle. Stroke or fill the selection.
I agree it's a bit counter-intuitive, but afaik it's always worked like that.
Let everyone be reminded how joyful GIMP 2.10 menus used to look ...
If you mean the color icons, you can easily switch back to those in the Welcome Dialog that appears when you first open GIMP (look in the Personalize tab). It's the first thing I do when I install GIMP on a new machine. :)
oh wow, i never realized that this is in such a convenient location. and you can't just change the icon style, but also disable the tool groups which was the most annoying change i found because it makes finding the right tool harder. (i'd love tool groups where the tools are grouped but not folded, or in a way where i can expand certain groups that i use often)
Is it possible to train a model on all gimp features that will eventually let us prompt whatever edits we want and it’ll automate gimp to achieve it?
I find Gimp super useful and easy to learn. Using it to edit pdfs generated by NotebookLM is my new way of creating decks and presentations. Thanks for the great work.
Nice, is it now possible to draw a circle?
Use the ellipse selection tool and hold Shift to make it a circle. Hold Ctrl to pull from origo. Then use Stroke Selection or Fill Selection.
Although, I miss being able to create a selection from a point on the ellipse/circle instead of just origin or bounding box corner.
I would also like to stroke on the inside or outside of the selection instead of just its middle. I have often had to first fill the circle and then select again from the same origin point to cut out the inside.
Instead of trying to get at the same origin point, I usually just keep the selection active and then go to "Selection" menu and choose either "Shrink" or "Expand" options (or similar language: I use a localized version).
There's always the GFig filter, which has existed in GIMP for a long time. :)
GIMP 3.2 actually adds vector layers, which are the basis for a shape tool (it was my "big project" for this release). We have a GSoC project idea for doing the last bit of work to make a dedicated shape tool: https://developer.gimp.org/core/internship/ideas/#implement-...
You can draw a representation of a circle with extremely primitive tools and it isn't possible to actually draw a circle. Your question as rendered is hard to answer.
