{"id":4484,"date":"2015-11-27T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?guid=bed4b7772f1a05f571175daeb05b9ebd"},"modified":"2015-11-27T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T23:00:00","slug":"gimp-2-9-2-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?p=4484","title":{"rendered":"GIMP 2.9.2\u00a0Released"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are excited to announce the first development release of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> in the 2.9.x series. It is another major milestone towards making <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> a state-of-the art image editing application for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, and&nbsp;scientists.<\/p>\n<p>The new version is already available in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/downloads\/\">Downloads<\/a>&nbsp;section.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"gegl-port\"><span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> Port<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#gegl-port\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gegl.org\/\"><span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span><\/a> is <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&#8217;s new image processing engine. The <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> project was originally launched in 2000 by several developers from visual effects company Rhythm&amp;Hues who needed a versatile image editor for movie&nbsp;production.<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning, <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> was a challenging project, since no general image editing software at the time was built on top of the node compositions concept, and <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> had to be designed with just that in&nbsp;mind.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> developers Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, and \u00d8yvind Kol\u00e5s started porting <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> to use <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span>. However, this process had to be broken up into several stages, because <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&#8217;s source code was already huge at the&nbsp;time.<\/p>\n<p>So <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.6 (released in 2008) featured optional use of <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span>-based color grading tools and an experimental tool to use <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> &#8220;filters&#8221;. Then <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.8 (released in 2012) featured <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span>-based projection\u2014flattened representation of stacked&nbsp;layers.<\/p>\n<p>Now upcoming <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.10 is going to use <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> for pretty much everything under the hood, and v2.9.2 is the first technical preview release on the way towards&nbsp;v2.10.<\/p>\n<p>While a few advanced features of <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span> such as non-destructive editing are planned to be exposed in <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> at a later development stage (v3.2 and onwards), with 2.9.2, you can already benefit from certain aspects of the new engine, such&nbsp;as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16\/32bit per color channel&nbsp;processing<\/li>\n<li>Basic OpenEXR&nbsp;support<\/li>\n<li>On-canvas preview for many&nbsp;filters<\/li>\n<li>Experimental hardware-accelerated rendering and processing via&nbsp;OpenCL<\/li>\n<li>Higher-quality&nbsp;downscaling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Additionally, native support for <span class=\"caps\">PNG<\/span>, <span class=\"caps\">TIFF<\/span>, <span class=\"caps\">PSD<\/span>, and <span class=\"caps\">FITS<\/span> files in <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> has been upgraded to read and write 16\/32bit per color channel&nbsp;data.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-openexr-32bit-float-mode.jpg?w=920&#038;ssl=1\" alt='32bit float OpenEXR file in GIMP' \/><figcaption><span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> loads simple <strong>32bit float OpenEXR<\/strong> files and automatically switches to the respective precision mode (featuring a Cornell box reference file).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"new-and-improved-tools\">New and Improved Tools<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#new-and-improved-tools\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>All tools in <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> are now <span class=\"caps\">GEGL<\/span>-based and fully functional in up to 32bit per color channel precision&nbsp;mode.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 also introduced two new tools that we consider mostly&nbsp;complete:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Unified Transform<\/strong>, designed by Peter Sikking and implemented by Mikael Magnusson, combines rotation, scaling, skewing, and adjusting perspective in a single&nbsp;tool.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Warp Transform<\/strong>, implemented by Michael Mur\u00e9, replaces the old iWarp plugin and provides its features in a tool that works directly on images, without a preview&nbsp;window.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!-- \n\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-unified-transform.jpg' alt='Unified Transform tool' \/>\n\n \n<figcaption>The <strong>Unified Transform<\/strong> tool allows to rotate, skew, scale, and change perspective all in one go.<\/figcaption>\n \n\n<\/figure>\n\n --><\/p>\n<p>We have also improved several existing&nbsp;tools:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Blend<\/strong> tool, worked on by Michael Henning, is now more interactive. After drawing with the tool to define the beginning and the end of the gradient fill, you can adjust start\/end positions and change&nbsp;colors.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Align<\/strong> tool now features vertical and horizontal fill modes thanks to Jo\u00e3o <span class=\"caps\">S. O.<\/span>&nbsp;Bueno.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Foreground<\/strong> Select tool can finally make subpixel selections in complex cases such as strays of hair on textured background. Two new masking methods for that were added by Jan R\u00fcegg and Daniel Sabo, and the user interface was updated by Michael&nbsp;Natterer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!-- \n\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-blend-tool-handles.jpg' alt='Blend tool handles' \/>\n\n \n<figcaption>The **Blend** tool now allows tweaking position of start\/end handles, as well fill options before applying the fill.<\/figcaption>\n \n\n<\/figure>\n\n --><\/p>\n<p>Several new experimental tools can be enabled on the <em>Playground<\/em> page of <em>Preferences<\/em>&nbsp;dialog:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>N-Point Deformation<\/strong>, by Marek Dvoro\u017e\u0148\u00e1k, implements a new way to bend objects while preserving a natural&nbsp;look.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Handle Transform<\/strong>, by Johannes Matschke, is an interesting approach at applying scaling, rotating, and perspective correction using handles placed on the&nbsp;canvas.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Seamless Clone<\/strong>, by Barak Itkin, simplifies merging one image into another by adjusting brightness and colors of the pasted image to match the look of the image it is pasted&nbsp;to.<\/li>\n<li><strong>MyPaint Brush<\/strong> tool is our first shot at using more brush engines in <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>. The code was written by Michael&nbsp;Natterer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All the experimental tools are subject to performance optimizations, bugfixes, user interface redesign etc. We do not guarantee that they will be enabled in v2.10 by&nbsp;default.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Option 1: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pqVMt-ReaDc for Seamless Clone demo, unless there is a better one --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Option 2: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OmOyQyuiO_E for N-Point Deformation demo  --><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"file-format-support\">File Format Support<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#file-format-support\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Thanks to Mukund Sivamaran, Rasmus Hahn, and \u00d8yvind Kol\u00e5s, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> now features basic support for OpenEXR files, both loading and exporting. It&#8217;s currently missing advanced features such as layered or multiresolution <span class=\"caps\">EXR<\/span> files, or unpremultiplication when exporting etc., but you should be able to load, process, and export a &#8220;regular&#8221; floating point <span class=\"caps\">EXR<\/span> file just&nbsp;fine.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 features initial support for WebP images, also both loading and exporting. Missing features so far are <span class=\"caps\">ICC<\/span> profiles, metadata, and&nbsp;animation.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"color-management\">Color Management<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#color-management\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>The color management plugin has been replaced with completely new code by Michael Natterer to provide a more complete set of features, as well as better color fidelity preservation. E.g. <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> can finally handle cases, when one image is pasted into another, and color spaces don&#8217;t&nbsp;match.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> now uses LittleCMS v2 which minimizes color fidelity loss during conversions between 8, 16, 32, and 64bit per channel data, and provides support for <span class=\"caps\">ICC<\/span> v4 color&nbsp;profiles.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-icc-metadata.png?w=920&#038;ssl=1\" alt='Displaying ICC color profiles metadata' \/><figcaption>Displaying <span class=\"caps\">ICC<\/span> color profiles metadata<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>There are still some parts of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> like color choosers that need to become color-managed. We expect to complete this in time for&nbsp;v2.10.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"layers-blending\">Layers Blending<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#layers-blending\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>We have introduced some important changes to blending&nbsp;modes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overlay<\/strong> mode is not identical to <strong>Soft Light<\/strong> mode anymore and finally relies on a widely used formula from both <span class=\"caps\">PDF<\/span> specification, as well as <span class=\"caps\">W3C<\/span>&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/compositing-1\/\">&#8220;Compositing and Blending Level 1&#8221;<\/a>&nbsp;spec.<\/p>\n<p>When opening legacy <span class=\"caps\">XCF<\/span> files, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> will automatically map the old Overlay mode to the Soft Light during compositing to preserve the rendering of your old artwork. For all newly created layers with Overlay mode the new formula will be used&nbsp;instead.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to <span class=\"caps\">HSV<\/span>-based Hue, Saturation, Chroma, and Value modes <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> now features their <span class=\"caps\">CIE<\/span> <span class=\"caps\">LCH<\/span> based counterparts: Hue, Chroma, Color, and Lightness. Elle Stone provided a <a href=\"http:\/\/ninedegreesbelow.com\/photography\/gimp-lch-blend-modes.html\">nice example<\/a> of using them to post-process&nbsp;photos.<\/p>\n<p>Contributors are Rupert Weber, J\u00f6rn Meier, Massimo Valentini, Elle Stone, Thomas&nbsp;Manni.\ufeff<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"metadata\">Metadata<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#metadata\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 features an experimental dialog to view Exif, <span class=\"caps\">XMP<\/span>, and <span class=\"caps\">IPTC<\/span> metadata\u2014something that we&#8217;ve been meaning to provide photographers for quite a while. It doesn&#8217;t yet support adding or editing existing metadata\u2014this will be addressed at a later stage of&nbsp;development.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \n\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-metadata-viewer.png' alt='Metadata viewer' \/>\n\n \n<figcaption>Experimental built-in Exif\/XMP\/IPTC metadata viewer in GIMP. Use <tt>Image-&gt;Image Metadata<\/tt> command to pen it.<\/figcaption>\n \n\n<\/figure>\n\n --><\/p>\n<p>Just like the new color management implementation, metadata support is an integral part of <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;now.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"digital-painting\">Digital Painting<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#digital-painting\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Apart from the newly added <em>experimental<\/em> MyPaint Brush tool, there are several major and minor&nbsp;changes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Canvas rotation and flipping have been added to facilitate users who need to paint from a different angle or check composition for&nbsp;errors.<\/li>\n<li>You can optionally lock brush size to&nbsp;zoom.<\/li>\n<li>All tools that use <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span>&#8217;s brush engine now have hardness and force&nbsp;sliders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><video width=\"650\" height=\"366\" controls><source src=\"https:\/\/download.gimp.org\/mirror\/pub\/gimp\/video\/v2.9\/gimp-canvas-rotation-preview.webm\" type=\"video\/webm\"><source src=\"https:\/\/download.gimp.org\/mirror\/pub\/gimp\/video\/v2.9\/gimp-canvas-rotation-preview.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\">Your browser does not support the video tag.<\/video> <\/p>\n<p><!-- https:\/\/vimeo.com\/64481497 for canvas rotation --><\/p>\n<p>The final v2.10 release is expected to feature configurable mirror painting implemented by Jehan Pag\u00e8s thanks to <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> users who supported his crowdfunding campaign. The code is mostly complete and will undergo review in the coming&nbsp;weeks.<\/p>\n<p><!-- https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NwPY0sTiVPk for \"Current state of Symmetry painting in GIMP\" by Jehan --><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"configurability\">Configurability<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#configurability\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>To help interested users test experimental features, we added a new <em>Playground<\/em> page to the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog. In v2.9.2, it serves to enable experimental tools that we mentioned earlier in the&nbsp;news.<\/p>\n<p><em>Behaviour<\/em>, another new page in the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog, helps configuring default snapping in normal and fullscreen&nbsp;modes.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-behaviour-page.png?w=920&#038;ssl=1\" alt='Behaviour page in the Preferences dialog' \/><figcaption><em>Behaviour<\/em> page in the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Finally, the user interface to enable and disable tools in the toolbox has moved to the <em>Toolbox<\/em> page in the <em>Preferences<\/em>&nbsp;dialog.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"known-issues\">Known Issues<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#known-issues\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>At this stage, <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.9.x is mostly very stable and is known to be used in production by some brave users. However, certain image processing operations are currently slow. This has been partially remedied by rendering changes in the viewport first. We expect to do a lot of optimization work later&nbsp;on.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"further-plans\">Further Plans<a class=\"headerlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/2015\/11\/27\/gimp-2-9-2-released\/#further-plans\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>We are not planning any epic changes in the next 2.9.x releases. We want to release it as fast as we can, so we will be focusing on wrapping up what we have already started any maybe merging a few feature branches we&nbsp;have.<\/p>\n<p>When <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 2.10 is out, we shall focus on the <span class=\"caps\">GTK<\/span>+3 port to provide a more up-to-date user interface and restore rock-solid Wacom support on Windows and <span class=\"caps\">OS<\/span>&nbsp;X.<\/p>\n<p>Following <span class=\"caps\">GIMP<\/span> 3.0 release, we shall start working on non-destructive editing and other much anticipated&nbsp;features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are excited to announce the first development release of <span>GIMP<\/span> in the 2.9.x series. It is another major milestone towards making <span>GIMP<\/span> a state-of-the art image editing application for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, and&nbsp;scientists.<\/p>\n<p>The new version is already available in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/downloads\/\">Downloads<\/a>&nbsp;section.<\/p>\n<h2><span>GEGL<\/span> Port<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#gegl-port\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gegl.org\/\"><span>GEGL<\/span><\/a> is <span>GIMP<\/span>&rsquo;s new image processing engine. The <span>GEGL<\/span> project was originally launched in 2000 by several developers from visual effects company Rhythm&amp;Hues who needed a versatile image editor for movie&nbsp;production.<\/p>\n<p>From the very beginning, <span>GEGL<\/span> was a challenging project, since no general image editing software at the time was built on top of the node compositions concept, and <span>GEGL<\/span> had to be designed with just that in&nbsp;mind.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, <span>GIMP<\/span> developers Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, and &Oslash;yvind Kol&aring;s started porting <span>GIMP<\/span> to use <span>GEGL<\/span>. However, this process had to be broken up into several stages, because <span>GIMP<\/span>&rsquo;s source code was already huge at the&nbsp;time.<\/p>\n<p>So <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.6 (released in 2008) featured optional use of <span>GEGL<\/span>-based color grading tools and an experimental tool to use <span>GEGL<\/span> &ldquo;filters&rdquo;. Then <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.8 (released in 2012) featured <span>GEGL<\/span>-based projection&mdash;flattened representation of stacked&nbsp;layers.<\/p>\n<p>Now upcoming <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.10 is going to use <span>GEGL<\/span> for pretty much everything under the hood, and v2.9.2 is the first technical preview release on the way towards&nbsp;v2.10.<\/p>\n<p>While a few advanced features of <span>GEGL<\/span> such as non-destructive editing are planned to be exposed in <span>GIMP<\/span> at a later development stage (v3.2 and onwards), with 2.9.2, you can already benefit from certain aspects of the new engine, such&nbsp;as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>16\/32bit per color channel&nbsp;processing<\/li>\n<li>Basic OpenEXR&nbsp;support<\/li>\n<li>On-canvas preview for many&nbsp;filters<\/li>\n<li>Experimental hardware-accelerated rendering and processing via&nbsp;OpenCL<\/li>\n<li>Higher-quality&nbsp;downscaling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Additionally, native support for <span>PNG<\/span>, <span>TIFF<\/span>, <span>PSD<\/span>, and <span>FITS<\/span> files in <span>GIMP<\/span> has been upgraded to read and write 16\/32bit per color channel&nbsp;data.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-openexr-32bit-float-mode.jpg\" alt=\"32bit float OpenEXR file in GIMP\"><figcaption><span>GIMP<\/span> loads simple <strong>32bit float OpenEXR<\/strong> files and automatically switches to the respective precision mode (featuring a Cornell box reference file).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>New and Improved Tools<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#new-and-improved-tools\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>All tools in <span>GIMP<\/span> are now <span>GEGL<\/span>-based and fully functional in up to 32bit per color channel precision&nbsp;mode.<\/p>\n<p><span>GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 also introduced two new tools that we consider mostly&nbsp;complete:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Unified Transform<\/strong>, designed by Peter Sikking and implemented by Mikael Magnusson, combines rotation, scaling, skewing, and adjusting perspective in a single&nbsp;tool.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Warp Transform<\/strong>, implemented by Michael Mur&eacute;, replaces the old iWarp plugin and provides its features in a tool that works directly on images, without a preview&nbsp;window.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&lt;!&#8211; <\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-unified-transform.jpg' alt='Unified Transform tool' \/><figcaption>The <strong>Unified Transform<\/strong> tool allows to rotate, skew, scale, and change perspective all in one go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p> &#8211;&gt;<\/p>\n<p>We have also improved several existing&nbsp;tools:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Blend<\/strong> tool, worked on by Michael Henning, is now more interactive. After drawing with the tool to define the beginning and the end of the gradient fill, you can adjust start\/end positions and change&nbsp;colors.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Align<\/strong> tool now features vertical and horizontal fill modes thanks to Jo&atilde;o <span>S. O.<\/span>&nbsp;Bueno.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Foreground<\/strong> Select tool can finally make subpixel selections in complex cases such as strays of hair on textured background. Two new masking methods for that were added by Jan R&uuml;egg and Daniel Sabo, and the user interface was updated by Michael&nbsp;Natterer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&lt;!&#8211; <\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-blend-tool-handles.jpg' alt='Blend tool handles' \/><figcaption>The **Blend** tool now allows tweaking position of start\/end handles, as well fill options before applying the fill.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p> &#8211;&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Several new experimental tools can be enabled on the <em>Playground<\/em> page of <em>Preferences<\/em>&nbsp;dialog:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>N-Point Deformation<\/strong>, by Marek Dvoro&#382;&#328;&aacute;k, implements a new way to bend objects while preserving a natural&nbsp;look.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Handle Transform<\/strong>, by Johannes Matschke, is an interesting approach at applying scaling, rotating, and perspective correction using handles placed on the&nbsp;canvas.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Seamless Clone<\/strong>, by Barak Itkin, simplifies merging one image into another by adjusting brightness and colors of the pasted image to match the look of the image it is pasted&nbsp;to.<\/li>\n<li><strong>MyPaint Brush<\/strong> tool is our first shot at using more brush engines in <span>GIMP<\/span>. The code was written by Michael&nbsp;Natterer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All the experimental tools are subject to performance optimizations, bugfixes, user interface redesign etc. We do not guarantee that they will be enabled in v2.10 by&nbsp;default.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Option 1: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pqVMt-ReaDc for Seamless Clone demo, unless there is a better one --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Option 2: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OmOyQyuiO_E for N-Point Deformation demo  --><\/p>\n<h2>File Format Support<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#file-format-support\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Thanks to Mukund Sivamaran, Rasmus Hahn, and &Oslash;yvind Kol&aring;s, <span>GIMP<\/span> now features basic support for OpenEXR files, both loading and exporting. It&rsquo;s currently missing advanced features such as layered or multiresolution <span>EXR<\/span> files, or unpremultiplication when exporting etc., but you should be able to load, process, and export a &ldquo;regular&rdquo; floating point <span>EXR<\/span> file just&nbsp;fine.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 features initial support for WebP images, also both loading and exporting. Missing features so far are <span>ICC<\/span> profiles, metadata, and&nbsp;animation.<\/p>\n<h2>Color Management<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#color-management\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>The color management plugin has been replaced with completely new code by Michael Natterer to provide a more complete set of features, as well as better color fidelity preservation. E.g. <span>GIMP<\/span> can finally handle cases, when one image is pasted into another, and color spaces don&rsquo;t&nbsp;match.<\/p>\n<p><span>GIMP<\/span> now uses LittleCMS v2 which minimizes color fidelity loss during conversions between 8, 16, 32, and 64bit per channel data, and provides support for <span>ICC<\/span> v4 color&nbsp;profiles.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-icc-metadata.png\" alt=\"Displaying ICC color profiles metadata\"><figcaption>Displaying <span>ICC<\/span> color profiles metadata<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>There are still some parts of <span>GIMP<\/span> like color choosers that need to become color-managed. We expect to complete this in time for&nbsp;v2.10.<\/p>\n<h2>Layers Blending<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#layers-blending\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>We have introduced some important changes to blending&nbsp;modes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overlay<\/strong> mode is not identical to <strong>Soft Light<\/strong> mode anymore and finally relies on a widely used formula from both <span>PDF<\/span> specification, as well as <span>W3C<\/span>&rsquo;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/compositing-1\/\">&ldquo;Compositing and Blending Level 1&rdquo;<\/a>&nbsp;spec.<\/p>\n<p>When opening legacy <span>XCF<\/span> files, <span>GIMP<\/span> will automatically map the old Overlay mode to the Soft Light during compositing to preserve the rendering of your old artwork. For all newly created layers with Overlay mode the new formula will be used&nbsp;instead.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to <span>HSV<\/span>-based Hue, Saturation, Chroma, and Value modes <span>GIMP<\/span> now features their <span>CIE<\/span> <span>LCH<\/span> based counterparts: Hue, Chroma, Color, and Lightness. Elle Stone provided a <a href=\"http:\/\/ninedegreesbelow.com\/photography\/gimp-lch-blend-modes.html\">nice example<\/a> of using them to post-process&nbsp;photos.<\/p>\n<p>Contributors are Rupert Weber, J&ouml;rn Meier, Massimo Valentini, Elle Stone, Thomas&nbsp;Manni.&#65279;<\/p>\n<h2>Metadata<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#metadata\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><span>GIMP<\/span> 2.9.2 features an experimental dialog to view Exif, <span>XMP<\/span>, and <span>IPTC<\/span> metadata&mdash;something that we&rsquo;ve been meaning to provide photographers for quite a while. It doesn&rsquo;t yet support adding or editing existing metadata&mdash;this will be addressed at a later stage of&nbsp;development.<\/p>\n<p>&lt;!&#8211; <\/p>\n<figure>\n<img src='https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-metadata-viewer.png' alt='Metadata viewer' \/><figcaption>Experimental built-in Exif\/XMP\/IPTC metadata viewer in GIMP. Use <tt>Image-&gt;Image Metadata<\/tt> command to pen it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p> &#8211;&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Just like the new color management implementation, metadata support is an integral part of <span>GIMP<\/span>&nbsp;now.<\/p>\n<h2>Digital Painting<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#digital-painting\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Apart from the newly added <em>experimental<\/em> MyPaint Brush tool, there are several major and minor&nbsp;changes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Canvas rotation and flipping have been added to facilitate users who need to paint from a different angle or check composition for&nbsp;errors.<\/li>\n<li>You can optionally lock brush size to&nbsp;zoom.<\/li>\n<li>All tools that use <span>GIMP<\/span>&rsquo;s brush engine now have hardness and force&nbsp;sliders.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><video width=\"650\" height=\"366\" controls><br \/>\nYour browser does not support the video tag.<br \/>\n<\/video><\/p>\n<p><!-- https:\/\/vimeo.com\/64481497 for canvas rotation --><\/p>\n<p>The final v2.10 release is expected to feature configurable mirror painting implemented by Jehan Pag&egrave;s thanks to <span>GIMP<\/span> users who supported his crowdfunding campaign. The code is mostly complete and will undergo review in the coming&nbsp;weeks.<\/p>\n<p><!-- https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NwPY0sTiVPk for \"Current state of Symmetry painting in GIMP\" by Jehan --><\/p>\n<h2>Configurability<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#configurability\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>To help interested users test experimental features, we added a new <em>Playground<\/em> page to the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog. In v2.9.2, it serves to enable experimental tools that we mentioned earlier in the&nbsp;news.<\/p>\n<p><em>Behaviour<\/em>, another new page in the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog, helps configuring default snapping in normal and fullscreen&nbsp;modes.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/news\/images\/gimp-2-9-2\/2015-11-27-behaviour-page.png\" alt=\"Behaviour page in the Preferences dialog\"><figcaption><em>Behaviour<\/em> page in the <em>Preferences<\/em> dialog<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Finally, the user interface to enable and disable tools in the toolbox has moved to the <em>Toolbox<\/em> page in the <em>Preferences<\/em>&nbsp;dialog.<\/p>\n<h2>Known Issues<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#known-issues\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>At this stage, <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.9.x is mostly very stable and is known to be used in production by some brave users. However, certain image processing operations are currently slow. This has been partially remedied by rendering changes in the viewport first. We expect to do a lot of optimization work later&nbsp;on.<\/p>\n<h2>Further Plans<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/#further-plans\" title=\"Permanent link\">&para;<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>We are not planning any epic changes in the next 2.9.x releases. We want to release it as fast as we can, so we will be focusing on wrapping up what we have already started any maybe merging a few feature branches we&nbsp;have.<\/p>\n<p>When <span>GIMP<\/span> 2.10 is out, we shall focus on the <span>GTK<\/span>+3 port to provide a more up-to-date user interface and restore rock-solid Wacom support on Windows and <span>OS<\/span>&nbsp;X.<\/p>\n<p>Following <span>GIMP<\/span> 3.0 release, we shall start working on non-destructive editing and other much anticipated&nbsp;features.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?p=4484\"> Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,6,44,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-floss","category-imaging","category-oss"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9jmWQ-1ak","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4726,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4484\/revisions\/4726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}