The release of the GIMP 2.99.14 graphics editor is available, which continues the development of the functionality of the future stable branch of GIMP 3.0, in which the transition to GTK3 has been made, native support for Wayland and HiDPI has been added, support for the CMYK color model has been implemented, a significant cleaning of the code base has been carried out, and a new API for plug-in development has been proposed , rendering caching has been implemented, support for multi-layer selection has been added, and editing in the original color space has been provided. A flatpak package is available for installation (org.gimp.GIMP in the flathub-beta repository), as well as builds for Windows and macOS.
Among the changes:
- A new Gray theme has been proposed, which uses a moderately gray background with a brightness of 18.42%, more suitable for professional work with color (but the readability of the text in the panel with such a background leaves much to be desired).
- In the Preferences > Themes settings, the ability to change the size of icons is provided, regardless of the size defined in the theme. The change affects icons in panels, tabs, dialogs and widgets.
- Work with the Align and Distribute tool has been completely redesigned. Alignment operations are simplified by using the ability to select multiple layers at once. For example, you can now select multiple layers in the Layers panel and align their contents to the object currently selected on the canvas. Added an option to align based on the pixel content within the layer rather than the boundaries of the layer itself. A new widget has been added to set the reference point, which determines the place in the selected target object to which the alignment should be performed. Expanded options for the distribution of guides.
- New options for non-destructive stroke and letter outline fill have been added to the text placement tool. A new "Style" setting has been added, which offers three modes: Fill (initial style), Stroke (highlight the outline with color) and Stroke and fill (select the outline and fill the inside of the letters with the selected colors).
- Automatic activation of transformation tools (transformation, rotation, scaling, etc.) is provided. Until now, after selecting a tool in the panel, it was necessary to click on the canvas for the handles associated with it to appear. Now the handler for applying the tool appears immediately after selecting it in the panel.
- Revised the use of the floating selection concept, which used to be confusing for new users. When using the Ctrl+V combination, the image is now pasted as a new layer by default. The only exceptions are pasting into a layer mask, copying the contents of the canvas with the Alt key pressed, and explicitly selecting the option to use a floating layer (Floating Layer).
- Revised copy and paste operations (copy-paste). In the conditions of the appearance of the possibility of selecting several layers and elements, copying via the clipboard by default leads to pasting as a set of layers, but in the "Edit> Paste" settings there are two options that merge layers: paste as a separate layer and paste one layer by place.
- Significantly accelerated writing of XCF files due to multi-threaded packaging. For example, the recording time for a 115 MB image with 276 layers was reduced from 50 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Support for vectors (outlines) has been added to the XCF format structure, allowing you to store locks and color labels associated with contours.
- As part of porting the code base to GTK3, the main process was transferred to use the GTK classes GApplication and GtkApplication. The next step is to translate the menu into the GMenu class.
- When exporting as PDF, there is now an option to include only root layers, which becomes available when exporting layers as separate pages.
- Improved support for exporting in AVIF format, the implementation of which resolves compatibility issues with the Safari browser from iOS 16.0.
- When exporting to files in PSD format, support for the CMYK color space with a color depth of 8/16 bits per channel is implemented, as well as the ability to include contours.
- Added support for importing and exporting metadata for the JPEG-XL format.
- Added initial support for importing and exporting the ICNS format used to store icons on Apple platforms.
- Correct import of reduced pages from TIFF files is provided, which can now be loaded as a separate layer.
- Improved support for the macOS platform. Added DMG packages for devices based on Apple Silicon chips.
- Build testing continues using Meson instead of autotools. The use of Meson is recommended for all supported platforms, and autotools support is planned to be removed in a future release.
Source: opennet.ru