GIMP 3.0 RC2 Released With Bug Fixes Plus A Few Last Minute Features

The long-awaited GIMP 3.0 image editing program that is a free software alternative to Adobe Photoshop will not see its stable release in 2024... But just before the New Year, the GIMP 3.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available for testing.

GIMP 3.0 RC2 was announced this Friday night as the final release of GIMP 3.0 nears with this update being many years in the making with the porting over from the GTK2 to GTK3 tool-kit and countless other improvements. Since the GIMP 3.0 RC1 release in early November, there's been a lot of bug fixing for GIMP 3.0 RC2 plus a few late feature additions.

The GIMP 3.0 RC2 highlights include:

- Fixing the migration of GIMP 2.10 settings to GIMP 3.0.

- Integration between Darktable 5.0 and GIMP 3.0 RC2 should be working out nicely for those wanting to use the Darktable RAW photography software in conjunction with GIMP.

- Implementing the new GEGL Filter API.

- GIMP 3.0 RC2's AppImage build should now be working on most Linux distributions.

- BMP file format plug-in improvements like to import losslessly in their original precision, RLE24 and Huffman compressed BMP images, the ability to load larger BMPs, and other improvements.

- Support for loading CMYK PAM files via the PNM plug-in.

- Improved compatibility for loading older GIMP XCF files.

Downloads and more details on the GIMP 3.0 RC2 release via the GIMP.org release announcement. No 3.0 stable release date has been announced yet but hopefully it won't be too far into 2025 before seeing this much anticipated release.