Mar 19, 2025 15:43:00

Finally, 'GIMP 3.0' is released, with a lot of new features such as 'non-destructive filters' that allow you to change the edited content later and support for GTK 3, and a new official logo has also appeared

On Sunday, March 16, 2025, version 3.0 of the open source image editing app 'GIMP' was released. This is the first major version upgrade in seven years since the release of GIMP 2.10, and several major changes have been made, including support for GTK 3 and the implementation of non-destructive filters.

GIMP 3.0 Released - GIMP

https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/03/16/gimp-3-0-released/

GIMP - GIMP 3.0 Release Notes
https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html

GIMP is a cross-platform image editing application that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The first version of GIMP was released in January 1996, and it is supported by many users as a free and open source image editing application. Incidentally, the first Google logo was also created with GIMP.

Google's first logo was made with GIMP - GIGAZINE

During the initial development of GIMP, the library 'GTK' for drawing the UI was also developed at the same time. This GTK has become a standard GUI library in Linux, and after repeated updates, GTK 4 is the mainstream version at the time of writing. However, GIMP has been running on GTK 2 for a long time, and it took a long time to update to GTK 3.

In the recently released GIMP 3.0, the GUI library has finally been updated to GTK 3. This allows it to run natively in a Wayland environment and also improves UI scaling in high DPI environments.

Another highlight of GIMP 3.0 is the implementation of non-destructive filters (NDE filters). Previously, if you wanted to change the contents of various editing processes after brightness editing or filter processing, you had to repeatedly hit 'Ctrl + Z' to rewind the operation to before editing. In GIMP 3.0, editing contents such as brightness correction and various filters are saved separately, and it is now possible to 'disable only part of the editing' or 'change specific editing contents' while editing an image.

Here's an example of a non-destructive filter: First, open a photo of an airplane in GIMP, then use the tone curve to adjust the brightness and apply a noise reduction filter.

Click “fx” on the layer screen.

You'll then see a list of all the edits you've made so far. You can change the order of your edits on this screen, or click the eyeball button to temporarily disable editing.

If you want to change the edited content, click the edited content you want to change and then click the edit button at the bottom. This time, we will re-edit the tone curve.

When I clicked the Edit button, the tone curve editing screen was displayed. The tone curve displayed here is not a 'tone curve based on the image after editing is applied,' but a 'tone curve that saves the previous editing state.' By utilizing the non-destructive filter function, it is possible to perform operations such as 'redoing color correction performed at the beginning of the editing process while maintaining the editing state after that,' which makes image editing more efficient.

Other major changes include:
- Improved PSD export
- Layer auto-expansion feature
- Enhanced text editing function
- Improved layer organization function
- Improved color management
・Added startup dialog

GIMP 3.0 also introduced a new official logo . Below is the new official GIMP logo:

The developer logo looks like this:

You can download the latest version of GIMP at the following link:

GIMP - Downloads
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/