GIMP 2.10.12 update: faster painting, support for user-installed fonts, and more
The development team behind the open source graphics editor GIMP released GIMP 2.10.12, a new stable version of the program on June 12, 2019.
The new version is labeled as a bug fix release; it comes after the major GIMP 2.10.10 release of April 2019 that introduced plenty of new features and improvements. The last major version of the image editor, GIMP 2.10, was released in 2018.
As is the case with GIMP releases, it takes a while to publish download links of the new version on the GIMP homepage. The new version is not available yet for download, but the release notes have been published already.
GIMP 2.10.12: What's New
One of the main new features of GIMP 2.10.12 is support for user-installed fonts on Windows 10. Windows 10 users may install fonts without admin permissions and the new GIMP version includes the folder these fonts are placed in when it scans the system for fonts.
The team notes that the functionality has not been fully tested due to a lack of Windows developers. None of the GIMP developers use Windows according to the release notes and the team used the release to invite Windows developers to join the project and take care of the ever-increasing list of bugs on the platform.
GIMP 2.10.12 has more to offer than just that though:
- Faster painting in specific cases (if the paint color/pixmap has not changed, paint buffer is not replaced).
- Curves tool improvements:
- Relative motion when dragging points.
- Snap to curve when holding CTRL.
- Numeric input of Curves tool points.
- Smooth or corner curve-point types added.
- TIFF layer support.
- Dodge/Burn tool incremental mode.
- Free Select tool creates preliminary selection.
- New Offset tool "shifts pixels and optionally wraps them around the edges" to create repeatable patterns.
GIMP 2.10.12 is a bug fix release mostly. It addresses a huge number of issues including color management bugs, crashes, format bugs, localization bugs, and more.
The new version of GIMP is now available for download on the official download page of the project.
Now You: Which graphics editor do you use, and why?
I can’t get it to download a pattern. Is there a special way to do this on Gimp 2.10.12? If so, step by step directions would be welcomed greatly. Thank you
you seem to have trouble with notation 2.10.12 is not a new version but only bugs correction release; if i remember well you’ve done the same with paint.net.
please refer to the wiki
the version we are waiting for is 3.0 and so 2.10xxx we don’t mind
You cannnot pull the wool over people’s eyes, there is a long run before we got a real software because this is and remains a linux soft and furthermore not user friendly
Affinity photo works well for 43$, Photoshop for people who need it; but there are plenty of softs you can use for a personnal common use. look over yonder.
I used to use GIMP a lot when Windows 10 first came out, but each new version of GIMP worked less and less well until I found it almost unusable. It’s apparent GIMP is not designed to survive the Windows environment due to their programming skills they have currently available. I’ll not even try the GIMP Windows 10 new version when it’s available; I’ve been too disappointed with their Windows environment application for several years now.
I find the non-store Irfanview and Paint.NET covers 95% of my needs, so I use several other programs to cover the remaining 5%. I still have not found a great alternative to the old GIMP sharpen function.
The GIMP devs already asked for anyone that uses Windows to help them in fixing Windows-specific issues. None of the devs uses Windows so the Windows version is pilling up problems that the devs can’t fix.
@chesscanoe: “due to their programming skills they have currently available”
It might be that, but it might also be that properly supporting Windows costs more in time and effort than they can afford. I can tell you from years of experience that programming for Windows is a real time-sucking pain.
Great news !
I use the older iteration of GIMP, the 2.8 series. I tried the newer one 2.10.x but found that it was a resource hog. It requires more ram and more hard drive space without providing much more functionality to make it worth those hits. FYI, I am using a decade old computer with it.
And there is one other issue I have with the 2.10 series that also exists in the 2.8, the ridiculous need to create a font cache every time it loads, and if you add new fonts you have to restart GIMP. It be more sensible to create a permanent cache file of fonts, or limit itself to just the ones in its own fonts folder.
I’m pretty sure they fixed the font cache loading issue in one of the 2.10 releases.
I agree with you. The new GIMP becomes slower and slower with no functionality for what it worth.
About the building font cache on every startup, I wonder why those open sources always have problem with it. VLC also has same problem for decades.
Nice! I’ve been use GIMP for all of my image editing needs for years now, and I’m looking forward to trying the new version out. I’ll wait for it to hit my distro’s repository, though — I like to minimize the number of manual installs that I do.
Looking at the bug list (tiff layers supported until.now?) I prefer the big bad old ps but an old CS4 version I brought in a chance. I need do print, web, color management in a single app.
@zr0
Well, I got just what you need, mate!
Here’s the link for the latest GIMP portable (available on PortableApps): https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
I’ve been using it for quite some time and never had any trouble.
Affinity Photo, works well, no nagware.
I rarely do image editing (and it’s something simple anyway whenever the need arises) so I’d like a portable software for that. Have to use Krita since it offers portable builds even though it’s mainly used for digital drawing but I’d switch to GIMP in an instant if it had official portable builds for Windows.
Just go to photopea.com and boom, instant (almost) Photoshop!
https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
Yeah, I know about PA but I’d prefer an official build :)