New features for upcoming GIMP 2.8

Numerous enhancements … but my most longed for feature – non-destructive editing – will only be in the version after that. Still I’m looking forward to v2.8.

The recent announcement on GIMP’s official website gave a teaser on some of the new features and future thrusts for the next stable release of GIMP and beyond. 

First off, the GIMP development team are now in the final stages of developing the next stable release of GIMP – version 2.8. Enhancements include “layer groups, improved brush dynamics, a new unique transformation tool, optional single-window mode and more”.

According to the notice, the focus of development after the release of v2.8 will shift to deep integration of GEGL – the new non-destructive image processing core. Non-destructive image editing is one of the areas where GIMP lags behind Photoshop. This thrust will “enable many features considered critical for use of GIMP in (a) professional environment.

GIMP's splash logo for v1

v1 Logo by Jens Lautenbacher

GIMP started life as a semester project at University of California, Berkeley in 1995 and was first released to the public in 1996. The current stable release is v2.6 which was released in 2008. The latest bugfix is v2.6.11 dated Oct 2010.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under GIMP, Software, Tech news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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