by Martin Brinkmann on August 21, 2018 in Music and Video - Last Update: August 21, 2018 - 14 comments
A new version of the popular cross-platform image editor GIMP was released yesterday. GIMP 2.10.6 features a number of important changes and improvements including new filters and other enhancements.
While the new version of GIMP was released yesterday officially, builds for Windows and Mac OS X devices were published today.
This download includes Gutenprint printing software that shipped with Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard). For information about supported printer models, see: http. The Free & Open Source Image Editor. This is the official website of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software. GIMP 2.10.6 Released 2018-08-19.
The new stable version of the image editor can be downloaded from the project's website. It is provided as a direct and torrent download for Windows and Mac OS X, and as a Flatpack or source code release for GNU/Linux.
Windows users can install the new version over existing installations; customizations and choices made during installation of the initial version are preserved when the new version gets installed.
GIMP 2.10.6
GIMP includes a modified file dialog that does away with the two file format lists that previous versions had.
The new dialog displays the location selector on the left, the list if matching files in the middle column, and a preview of selected items on the right. Below that is the new file filter which you may expand by clicking on 'select file type'.
The default is 'automatically detected' but you can switch that to any of the supported types instead to filter the file listing at the top based on your selection.
Saving works similarly but with added options to create a new folder or change the target folder for the image.
You may check the 'show all files' box in all dialogs to display all files in the file list.
As far as editor related changes are concerned, there are some. If you work with a lot of layers and relatively large images regularly, you will notice that responsiveness in regards to scrolling the list or hiding/showing layers improved significantly in GIMP 2.10.6 thanks to switching to asynchronous rendering.
GIMP introduced a new Horizon Straightening tool in GIMP 2.10.4 and with GIMP 2.10.6 comes vertical straightening support.
The Straighten mode is set to auto by default; when used, Straighten will 'snap to the smaller angle to decide for vertical or horizontal straightening' but it is possible to override this by selecting horizontal or vertical from the measure tools panel.
Press Shift-M to launch the Measure tool in GIMP or select Tools > Measure from the menu at the top.
GIMP 2.10.6 includes two new filters that users can make use of:
![Pour Pour](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125878806/382970693.png)
- Little Planet, which you find under Filters > Map > Little Planet, takes the image (preferably a panorama image) and turns it into miniature planets.
- Long Shadow, which you find under Filters > Light and Shadow > Long Shadow, creates long shadows using several visual styles.
The new version of GIMP introduces vertical text layer support next to all that which is particularly useful for East-Asian writing systems that use the orientation but also for design.
The text tool supports the following options in GIMP 2.10.6:
- From left to right.
- From right to left.
- Vertical, right to left (mixed orientation).
- Vertical, right to left (upright orientation).
- Vertical, left to right (mixed orientation).
- Vertical, left to right (upright orientation).
GIMP 2.10.6 improves DLL handling on Windows further to avoid what is commonly known as DLL-hell. The new release improves the handling which should result in fewer conflicts and issues. The upcoming version 3 of GIMP requires that plugins put files into their own directories which version 2.x does not.
The development team teased a new central extensions manager in GIMP that improves management of any content -- plugins, brushes, gradients -- in GIMP. The feature has not yet landed in Stable but it will make an appearance in future 2.10.x versions of GIMP.
Closing Words and verdict
GIMP 2.10.6 introduces new features and improvements to the image editor. While most of them are quite specialized and only useful for certain use cases, improvements to the load and save functionality are certainly welcome by the majority of users.
Now You: Do you use GIMP or another image editor primarily?
GIMP
Software Category
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Windows
185 MB
16,767
As featured in:
Customizable Interface
Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. Pressing the tab key will toggle them hidden.
GIMP features a great fullscreen mode allowing you to not only preview your artwork but also do editing work while using the most of your screen estate.
Photo Enhancement
Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens' barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.
Digital Retouching
GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.
Hardware Support
GIMP includes a very unique support for various input devices out of the box. Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers. You can bind often-used actions to device events such as rotating a USB wheel or moving a MIDI controller's slider. Change the size, angle or opacity of a brush while you paint, bind your favorite scripts to buttons. Speed up your workflow.
File Formats
The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in. You can find some rare format support in the GIMP plugin registry.
Thanks to the transparent virtual file system, it is possible to load and save files to from remote locations using protocols such as FTP, HTTP or even SMB (MS Windows shares) and SFTP/SSH.
To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.
What's New:
- Basic out-of-canvas pixels viewing and editing
- Optional editing of layers with disabled visibility
- Foreground Select tool: new Grayscale Preview Mode
- Newly added Normal Map filter
- 27 old filters ported to use GEGL buffers
- HEIF, TIFF, and PDF support improvements
- Better loading of corrupted XCF files
- Grayscale workflows order of magnitude faster
- macOS Catalina compatibility
- 45 bugfixes, 22 translation updates
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