GIMP 2.8.20 (stable) image editor was released recently, bringing various bug and small enhancements, and today it was uploaded to a PPA for Ubuntu.
GIMP 2.8.20 changes include:
- Core:
- fixed: saving to existing .xcf.bz and .xcf.gz files didn't truncate them and could lead to unnecessarily large files;
- fixed: text layer created by gimp-text-fontname doesn't respect border when resized;
- GUI:
- fixed: vertical ruler shows artifacts if the status bar isn't showing;
- improve the visiblity of slider handles with dark themes;
- make it harder to switch to renaming if selecting already selected items in resource lists;
- Tools:
- make toggling to color picker mode of paint tools more robust;
- Plug-ins:
- fixed: filter 'Edge Detect/Difference of Gaussians' returns empty image;
- when printing, the images are composed onto a white background to prevent printing a black box instead of a transaprent image;
- fixed: color visison deficiency display filters to apply gamma correction directly.
A complete changelog can be found HERE.
2.8.x is the stable GIMP branch, and it doesn't include any new features.
You may be wondering about the status of the next GIMP major releases: 2.10 and 3.0.
Well, GIMP 2.10 is currently blocked by some improvements that have yet to be implemented, such as the introduction of linear workflow, reworked layer modes, and improved color management, among others.
As for GIMP 3.0, the GIMP developers say that the GTK+3 port may prove to be a bigger change than expected, and GIMP 3.0 may end up switching to GTK+4. You can read more about this on the GIMP blog.
For how to install GIMP 2.9.x (development) in Ubuntu or Linux Mint via PPA, see THIS article.
Install GIMP 2.8.20 in Ubuntu or Linux Mint
As usual, the latest stable GIMP is available in Otto's PPA. To add the PPA and install GIMP in Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other Ubuntu-based Linux distributions, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gimpThe PPA also includes updated GIMP Plugin Registry, a colection of many optional GIMP extensions, as well as the G'MIC (GREYC's Magic foor Image Computing) GIMP plugin which includes more than 450 filters. To install both of these, use the commands below:
sudo apt install gimp-plugin-registry gimp-gmicFor other Linux distributions, Windows and Mac, see the GIMP downloads page.
How to revert the changes
In case you encounter issues and you want to go back to the GIMP version available in the Ubuntu repositories, you can purge the PPA using ppa-purge.
To install ppa-purge and purge Otto's GIMP PPA, use the commands below:
sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
