GIMP 2.6 open source image editor launched

by Brad Linder Oct 1st 2008

The developers behind open source the image editing application GIMP have released a major update. GIMP 2.6 includes a number of changes to the user interface and tools and plugins. There are a also a few important changes under the hood.

One of the most noticable changes is that the main menu items have been moved from the toolbox window to the image window so that you can access most options in one place. Another major change is the ability to pan beyond the border of an image. The free select tool has been tweaked so that it now supports polygonal selections, and there are new brush dynamic options that let you tweak the size, opacity, pressure, and velocity of brush strokes. GIMP 2.6 also uses GEGL for processing most color operations.

You can find a complete list of changes in the release notes.

GIMP 2.6 is available for download via FTP. It's not yet available in the Ubuntu repositories, and there's no Windows installer yet, so you might want to wait a while before installing GIMP 2.6 unless you're comfortable compiling applications from source.

[via Slashdot]

Update: The Windows version is now available for download.

Tags: gimp, gimp-2.6, image-editing

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dr. Chuck said 6:24PM on 10-01-2008

GIMP for Windows 2.6.0 is available now.

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

animated happy birthday said 7:43AM on 10-10-2008

It is a very good idea. Just love it very much!

kriscolumbus said 8:22PM on 10-01-2008

The lack of a polygonal selection tool is why I haven't used The GIMP more in the past. I'm extremely happy they've included it in this release.

Samuel said 9:13PM on 10-01-2008

I can't stand running this in X11, I will wait for the native OS X release, which I've heard is soon.

Christina Warren said 10:43AM on 10-02-2008

You might want to download the free trial of Pixelmator in the meantime. It isn't free, but it is pretty inexpensive (I got it as part of the MacHeist or Mac Update bundle last winter) and is a great native Cocoa app alternative to Photoshop. You'll pry Photoshop out of my cold, dead hands, but if I need to use a tool on the quick, Pixelmator is great.

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