IT!

GIMP 2.10.6 introduces vertical text layers and comes with improved performance. Recently, the GNOME foundation received a 400,000 $ donation and they sent a quarter of that money to GIMP. Hopefully this financial support will help to finally make GIMP useable in a productive environment. Currently, color management is still broken. But the space invasion project made the underlying General Graphical Library (GEGL) fully color-managed and the developers of GIMP try to make use of this and make GIMP fully color managed, too. This development takes place in the GIMP 2.99 development version ( git master branch of GNOME/gimp). For the time being, stick to the second big open-source image manipulation software, Krita , whenever possible (the text tool needs to be overhauled). Krita 4.11 has support for Python 3 scripting, vector, filter, group, and file layers. You can nondestructively work on layers with masks. Krita supports full color management through LCMS for ICC and OpenColor IO fo...

Finally, the GNU Image Manipulating Program (GIMP) 2.10.0 has been released. The open source software GIMP can now be considered for productive work and makes professional image manipulation available for everyone. It supports high bit depth (up to 32 bit precision) and color management. Most importantly, GIMP now gives access to radiometrically correct adjustment of contrast / levels / curves, color mixing and blending ( these operations have to be performed in a linear working space , i.e. in a color working space which has a tone reproduction curve with a gamma of 1.0 at all densities). GIMP is cross-platform software which means it is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple iOS. In my oppinion, this achievement is worth a donation to the developers by every user of GIMP. GIMP can now be regarded as a serious competitor for Adobe Photoshop.

Finally, the GNU Image Manipulating Program (GIMP) 2.10 release candidate 1 is available for Linux as well as for the 64 bit version of Microsoft Windows. It is the first time, the open source software GIMP can be used for serious, professional image manipulation. It supports high bit depth (up to 32 bit precision) and color management. Most importantly, this is the first time GIMP gives access to radiometrically correct adjustment of contrast / levels / curves, color mixing and blending ( these operations have to be performed in a linear working space , i.e. in a color working space which has a tone reproduction curve with a gamma of 1.0 at all densities). Only few problems remain to be solved, before GIMP 2.10 can be officially released as stable.