Software-update: GIMP 3.0.4

Versie 3.0.4 van het opensource fotobewerkingsprogramma GIMP is uitgekomen. De naam GIMP is een afkorting voor 'GNU Image Manipulation Program'. De software is beschikbaar voor diverse besturingssystemen, waaronder Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, macOS en Solaris. In versie 3.0 is de overstap naar GTK3 gemaakt, kunnen xcf-bestanden nu groter dan 4GB zijn en kan het efficiënter gebruikmaken van multicoreprocessoren. Versie 3.0.4 is de tweede update met voornamelijk bugfixes, de details zijn hieronder te vinden.

Release Highlights

Micro releases like 3.0.4 are focused on fixing bugs and regressions, so there are no major new features to announce (though we continue to work on those! Just on separate feature branches for GIMP 3.2). However, we want to tell you about some major fixes that may have impacted your workflow.

General Bugfixes

There was a bug with pasting selections from GIMP into other programs, where the pasted section was padded to the original image size. This is now fixed. If you notice any regressions or other issues after this fix, please let us know!

There were several types of crash reported to us, related to changing or turning off the main monitor. However, if you continue to have problems related to this, let us know so we can continue to work on it.

Our resident font experts have been busy making improvements to our text systems. In addition to general bug fixes with text layers, they’ve also greatly improved font loading speed on start-up. If you have a large number of fonts on your computer, GIMP should start much faster now!

Non-destructive filters received a number of bugfixes and improvements as well. The name of the filter is once again displayed in the undo history when added to an image. In addition, individual filter edits are now tracked in the undo history. We also resolved a few crashes, and we fixed some visual glitches when rotating layers with active non-destructive filters.

A few other small fixes of note:

• New contributor Gabriele Barbero fixed a bug where the Help button on the About Dialog didn’t load the help page correctly.
• New contributor Integral fixed a bug on KDE Wayland where the default Wayland icon was shown instead of our Wilber icon.
• The ZDI-CAN-26752 bug for .ICO imports is now fixed.

Regressions

Akkana Peck noticed that the Window Hint option in Preferences no longer allowed floating windows to stay in front of the main image window in multi-window mode. She found and implemented a fix using the updated GTK3 API.

The space bar once again respects the action setting in Canvas Interactions. This means instead of always panning, you can set it to switch to the Move Tool instead - or even set it to do nothing at all!

The Difference Cloud filter once again has a GUI to let you adjust its settings. This actually fixes a regression from the port to GEGL in GIMP 2.8, so it’s a long-standing update!

A few other small fixes of note:

• The Plug-in Browser should now show all plug-ins again.
• New contributor Aruius resolved a bug where the Sample Points display didn’t update when the image’s precision changed.
• The Screenshot plug-in once again uses radio buttons rather than a drop-down menu for its options, reducing the number of clicks needed to change settings.
• Rupert Weber fixed a bug on Linux where BMP format warnings didn’t display in some cases.

UI/UX

Since this is a “bugfix” release, we didn’t want to make too many disruptive UI changes. However, Reju has identified and designed a few smaller updates to help make GIMP’s UI more consistent.

• The MyPaint Brush tools options UI has been redesigned to match the layout of other painting tools.
• The generic “Force” slider does not impact the Pencil Tool. This option is now hidden in that tool’s options rather than just marked inactive, to be less confusing.
• The Device Status dock has been updated to show more clearly which input device is in use, and is closer to the GIMP 2.10 version.

The Path tool now automatically closes the path when you click on the starting point in Design mode, rather than requiring you to hold down the Ctrl first. This makes the Path tool more consistent with similar tools in GIMP, as well as in other software. If you need to move the starting point, you can deselect the current end point by holding Shift when you click on it, and then select the starting point to move it.

Jacob Boerema reviewed our brush size code, and found that different parts of GIMP set different limits for the maximum brush size. He defined a single maximum value and set it to be used throughout GIMP, to ensure there are no surprises when resizing your brush!

A few other small fixes of note:

• On Windows, floating docks in Multi-Window Mode now also have their titlebars match the theme dark mode setting.
• You can now press Enter to connect the start and end points in Scissor Select. Pressing Enter a second time will create a selection as normal.

Build

We received reports that GCC 15 could not build GIMP by default, due to some older areas of our codebase using now reserved keywords for variable names. Nils Philippsen located the problem areas and updated the relevant code to match current standards.

On macOS, we now have a developer version of the .DMG as first mentioned in the 3.0.2 news post. This means that creating plug-ins for macOS will be much easier and faster than before. Thanks again to Lukas Oberhuber, Peter Kaczorowski, Dominik Reichardt, and other contributors for their hard work!

Our resident packaging and build expert Bruno Lopes has been busy with more improvements to our processes. A few of these updates are listed below:

AppImage

The AppImage no longer contains Debug Symbols for dependencies (with the exception of babl and GEGL). This should significantly cut down on the file size, going back to the small size it had in RC3. Instead, if you need to debug the AppImage, follow our new debugging instructions.

Smaller and smarter Windows installer

To guarantee the best stability for future GIMP installations on Microsoft Windows, the installer’s Customize mode is now restricted to “clean” installations (a.k.a. when you first install GIMP). That’s because we need to adjust or even remove features from the .exe installer when they get too hard to maintain or become potentially broken (e.g. our custom file associations page was removed starting with GIMP 2.10.12 installer). In the Customize mode case, it was suppose to let you choose what GIMP components should installed, but unfortunately, it was not working like that at all.

Back then, to allow the Customize mode between GIMP installations (e.g. when reinstalling, updating), our Windows developers needed to 1) hardcode the components files almost twice and 2) code our own utility to do recursive uninstall of some complex components. All of that extra work to barely emulate how it (automatically) works on NSIS and WIX installers. Because of this, that feature became unmaintained without us noticing for many years and was silently breaking some GIMP installations. That said, you will still be able to use that feature with the command line - but keep in mind it is not properly working.

To be clear: that feature works perfectly on clean installs and, from 3.0.4 onward, also if the installer detects a broken install (e.g. when you installed GIMP in a external SSD but lost it). We call this much requested feature: Repair mode.

Also in the Customize mode, in addition to letting you choose what language packs are present, you can now also choose to install plug-in development files which work with our new plug-in tutorials.

As a bonus, even if you select literally all components available in the Customize mode, GIMP 3 is still more than 300MB smaller than GIMP 2.10, that’s it.

GEGL and babl

GEGL version 0.4.62 brings several bug fixes to prevent crashes, courtesy of Øyvind Kolås. UI ranges were added by Budhil Nigam to some operations, which means our Fractal Trace filter now has more sensible number ranges on the slider.

babl version 0.1.114 contains some fixes from Øyvind to ensure TRCs are stored correctly from color profiles.

Internally, Bruno Lopes converted many scripts in both projects to use Python, making them easier to build on other platforms.

Release Stats

Since GIMP 3.0.2, in the main GIMP repository:

• 90 reports were closed as FIXED.
• 59 merge requests were merged.
• 280 commits were pushed.
• 15 translations were updated: British English, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Danish, French, Georgian, German, Norwegian Nynorsk, Persian, Portuguese, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.

Versienummer	3.0.4
Releasestatus	Final
Besturingssystemen	Linux, macOS, Windows 10, Windows 11
Website	The GIMP
Download	https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Licentietype	Voorwaarden (GNU/BSD/etc.)