“Despite its relatively obscure version number, GIMP 2.9.2, released recently, represents a major leap forward for the popular image editing suite,” Scott Gilbertson writes for The Register. “Like all odd-numbered GIMP releases, 2.9.2 is considered a technical preview, but the features here will form the base of the stable release GIMP 2.10.”
“This release has a lot of under-the-hood changes – in particular this largely completes the move to the Generic Graphics Library, better know as GEGL,” Gilbertson writes. “GEGL is GIMP’s ‘new’ image processing engine and the project has been slowly incorporating GEGL code for quite a few releases. In fact, while the GEGL in GIMP still gets referred to as ‘new,’ the project itself began life in 2000 and GIMP has been slowly porting over to GEGL since 2007.”
“GIMP 2.9.2 is considered a technical preview. Unlike some past previews, though, I’ve found this one to be rock solid in my testing,” Gilbertson writes. “That said, don’t try to do production work in this release. GIMP has a ‘when it’s ready’ release policy, but much of what’s due in 2.10 is already in 2.9.2, so hopefully an official release of 2.10 won’t be too far in the future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Having long ago moved to Pixelmator and dabbling in Affinity Photo (and liking it), we haven’t look at GIMP in awhile.
Anybody using the latest GIMP? If so, what’s your verdict?
Dump Photoshop? If you already have a working version there isn’t much reason to upgrade nor is there reason to witch to something else. Gimp is for people who never had Photoshop in the first place.
True. I wish someone would make a world beating Photoshop, After Effects & Premiere Pro combo alternative that doesn’t require a monthly subscription.
Well I think that’s the point of switching, the monthly subscription. It’s pricey to use Creative Cloud and there are a couple very good contenders out there. I have been using photoshop since the 90’s and I’m just recently realizing it can be replaced. Affinity Photo is a stellar app.
Monthly subscription is the burden most people want to be out from under of. (We are besieged by this monthly stipend mentality of seemingly unlimited various services out there.) I have Affinity too and it’s very good. Yep I’ve been using Photoshop too a mighty long time but for as long as Adobe has owned this space I wish they had been a little more innovative and added more time saving features.
I use GIMP daily and it’s great; most of the basic functionality of Photoshop. The interface is wonky and took a little while to set up in a way I liked, but other than that it’s been solid. Plugins are also available to add functionality missing from the base package, like light & shadow adjustments.
Affinity Photo is a much better contender – also supports photoshop plugins.
GIMP is amateur hour. It based on making hard-to-use versions of functions that are already in Photoshop. If your time is worth anything at all, you’ll stick with a professional solution.
GIMP is fine for student artists and the like, but no true professional would use it.
I like affinity better than pixelmator.
But there is no substitute for Photoshop yet.. If you are used to its performance, features and accuracy ….
Not for me at least..
But if price is the main consideration then its a different story .
GIMP is free and has come a long way from its early versions. It is now sort-of Mac friendly. But it still has a lot of clunkiness compared to native Mac applications and is hardly a contender against Photoshop. There are a number of Mac native alternatives I’d rather use instead, including GraphicConverter, Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, Acorn or the recent Creative Kit 2016 (all of which I own rather than Photoshop).
Personally I think the Adobe cloud is fairly priced when you consider that you’re always up to date for the same low rate compared to a few years back when you had to purchase the CD for your software and then having to reinstall from scratch. I think the people out there that are not making a living using Photoshop and or other Adobe software do have a legitimate gripe about the price with that said, if you do make a living using this software it then becomes pennies on the dollar. As far as alternative software, in my 23 years of using Photoshop along with other Adobe products, nothing even comes close.
Interesting comments. I downloaded the latest development version of Gimp a couple of weeks ago, a not yet released version, and while the interface is clunky, it’s a pretty impressive program. The testing version has 16 bit processing, addressing a long time item from the wish list.
For the things I might otherwise use Photoshop for, Gimp is my go to program. I am shooting RAW, and a lot of the heavy lifting is now done in RAW conversion software. I have started using DarkTable to get from RAW files to 90-95% finished imaging, and Gimp for the remainder.
Were I processing much bigger batches of images from big shoots, maybe I’d go to Photoshop, but short of a need for that sort of batch processing automation, I see no benefit. Them again, more Raw converters are offering batch capability. So, still unsure I’d go to Photoshop.
GIMP is a great software alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Though Photoshop is very expensive so for beginners I would recommend GIMP for them. though GIMP and Photoshop are quite similar that’s why i am recommending this.
Your article is amazing. Keep sharing more. thanks
Adobe Photoshop is the king of all photo editing software. Every professional photo editors prefer this software. but for amateur photo editors or those who just want to edit their photo for personal use a lot of software available in the market beside Photoshop. GIMP is one of them. It’s a free software and its also available in Linux. Its the Photoshop of Linux.