The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) development team has finally announced that GIMP 3.0 is coming, and soon. The developers are preparing a test version and “if user feedback reveals only small bugs that are easy to fix, we will fix them and release the result as GIMP 3.0,” writes Tom’s Hardware.

The new version will have an updated, but still quite recognizable interface. It will have softer shapes and will scale better to high-resolution displays.

Many aspects of the GIMP 3.0 update are focused on the back-end of the editor to ensure that projects and plugins made in previous versions of GIMP are compatible. There are also bug fixes related to color accuracy, while maintaining compatibility with previous GIMP projects.

Gimp

The graphic editor has been evolving from version 2.0 to 3.0 for 20 years. Since GIMP is open source software, its development is not centralized and relies on enthusiasts.

Following a history of stable releases, GIMP has been in version 2.0 since 2004. Then 2.4X since 2007, 2.6X in 2007, 2.8X in 2012, and finally at version 2.10X from 2018 to the present. The original version of GIMP existed from 1995 to 2003.

If all goes according to plan, the stable version of GIMP 3.0 will be released by the end of 2024 or early 2025.