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Related to that, Jacob Boerema has implemented PSD Descriptor import support. Most of our current PSD support has been based on the the public Adobe specification. This document was last updated in 2019 however, and modern PSDs use a relatively undocumented text format called Descriptors to store many features.
The battle tested strategy of only providing old standards to others, like MS does.
I've recently tried using GIMP again and, as a past detractor, I've gotta say it's improved significantly.
Honestly so much better when they moved away from the "everything is a floating window" interface. I can find stuff now.
exactly. i've used photoshop professionally and tried gimp then.
gimp is not quite there yet, but the potential can now be seen.
Not to down on them too much but this comment is kind of funny in the context of a 30 year old program.
To be fair, Photoshop peaked about 10 years ago and has been steadily getting worse. It's only a matter of time before they're neck and neck.
I used to work in schools IT and I managed to get a lot of FOSS tools into regular use amongst both staff and students; Audacity, Libre Office, Firefox, even Debian in a few IT labs... but the one that never stuck was GIMP because no teacher is going to tell their class they'll be using GIMP today.
I know this is a tired point and will probably never be fixed, but that name causes more problems than anything else.
I only learned about this "negative connotation" from people yelling about how GIMP name is bad.
This is always interesting to hear because as someone who went school in a non English speaking country, GIMP was obviously never an issue. In most of the world the name isn't an issue.
I only learned about that alternative meaning years later.
Well shit, I never cared about the name but this convinced me because adoption and teaching about FOSS matters more.
GIMP is shaping up to be (and actually already is IMO) the best editor out there for nondestructive work.
Does the UX still suck though?
Nope. You just made the mistake of learning something else first and expecting other tools to match it
Expecting it to be the exact same and working in an expected way are different. Blender used to select with RMB instead of LMB like every other program in existence, is it really the users fault for finding that stupid?
Following expectations and having a "smooth" workflow is something to aim for unless the standard is really bad. No need to fix what ain't broken
This is true of pretty much all software. So many people expect to be able to pick up LibreOffice office and use it like they use MS office and then get immediately irritated the button doesn’t look exactly the same and give up.
I remember a guy telling me back in 2015 or so that Gimp was designed for having 2 monitors. At first I tought it made no sense but some yers after I got the chance to try and it way more comfortable to put all toollboxes in a separate monitor.
First thing I always do is set icon scheme to have colors. I don't know who thought monochrome for the tools was a good idea, but it takes me twice as long to find anything.
I've been using GIMP for over a decade. It's slowly starting to become one of the leading sources of frustration in my computing life. The more I learn about it the less it makes any sense.
Not trying to be negative here. Just saying that a modernization is much needed and I'm really excited for this.
I love GIMP and no amount of tedious naysaying will ever change my mind
The UI needs a global overhaul since the day one and still nobody talks about it
@BlackLaZoR @Vosh I think lots of people talk about it. :)
We have a dedicated UX site for people share to feedback on that very topic, which we try to implement as we can: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/-/work/_items
The hope is that over time, designers will get more comfortable and work on larger design challenges (like how new code contributors start small and hopefully grow to develop more complex features)
I love GIMP, regardless of UI.
I can do loads of stuff despite GIMP's efforts to stop me.
Leaving this here for Photoshop converts
https://github.com/Diolinux/Photogimp
I use Affinity full time at the moment, but if they ever go paid, I’m running straight to GIMP.
i completely switched to Affinity suit some 3 years ago at work. I was so excited when the affinity4linux install script dropped. but performance makes it near useless. slow and stuttering.
here is for hoping gimp and inkscape can one day match.
Very interesting, thanks for the update.
edit: I also love how the article credits every individual contributor for the new features they made, a very nice way to celebrate the group effort
Use Krita instead. It has a big tiddy anime waifu right on the splash screen.
Krita for the win if you just need the drawing part. Left Gimp long time ago for Krita and never looked back.
no it isnt. we keep hearing this and no, they never have a massive upgrade. that project doesnt do massive. that's not how it's ever be run. its stable, predictable, sane, but ugly things we have all hated forever will never be massively revamped in a single update.
We <3 GIMP
The page 404s
What is the upgrade?
I think that's the new page : https://testing.gimp.org/news/2026/08/16/dev-update-august-2026/