{"id":4486,"date":"2015-11-22T16:32:24","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T14:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?guid=96f139a0a86a25c35490b340eadc54b6"},"modified":"2015-11-22T16:32:24","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T14:32:24","slug":"20-years-of-gimp-release-of-gimp-2-8-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/?p=4486","title":{"rendered":"20 Years of GIMP, release of GIMP\u00a02.8.16"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week the GIMP<\/span> project celebrates its 20th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Back in 1995, University of California students, Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball, were members of the eXperimental Computing Facility, a Berkeley campus organization of undergraduate students enthusiastic about computers and programming. In June of that year, the two hinted at their intentions to write a free graphical image manipulation program as a means of giving back to the free software community.<\/p>\n

On November 21st, 20 years ago today, Peter Mattis announced the availability<\/a> of the “General Image Manipulation Program” on Usenet (later on, the acronym would be redefined to stand for the “GNU<\/span> Image Manipulation Program”). <\/p>\n

\nWilber Birthday Strip
\n<\/figure>\n

Since its public release the project has been evolving in many ways as a testbed for new ideas, which was considerably assisted by adding plug-in architecture. Over the years, GIMP<\/span> amassed a huge amount of new features designed for all kinds of users and practical applications: general image editing, retouching and color grading, digital painting, graphic design, science imaging etc.<\/p>\n

Between 2006 and 2012, the team collaborated with Peter Sikking of man+machine works<\/em> to define product vision<\/a> and improve user experience. Thanks to this collaboration GIMP<\/span>’s user interface has become more conventional for professional users, and various tools have become more powerful and easy to use. But more importantly, we got a much better idea how to design good interfaces.<\/p>\n

In the past several years we’ve been working hard on porting GIMP<\/span> to a newer image processing engine called GEGL<\/span>. The switch to GEGL<\/span> made us rewrite or at least tweak pretty much every part of GIMP<\/span>’s source code. Fortunately, this work is nearing completion, and you’ll soon be able to benefit from all the changes that it’s bringing.<\/p>\n

New Releases and The Future¶<\/a><\/h2>\n

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, we released an update of the current stable version of GIMP<\/span>. Newly released GIMP<\/span> 2.8.16<\/a> features support for layer groups in OpenRaster files, fixes for layer groups support in PSD<\/span>, various user inrterface improvements, OSX<\/span> build system fixes, translation updates, and more changes.<\/p>\n

Our immediate future plans are to release first public version in the unstable 2.9.x series that will feature fully functional GEGL<\/span> port, 16\/32bit per channel processing, basic OpenEXR support, vastly improved color management implementation, new tools, on-canvas preview for many filters, and more. This release will encompass over three years of work and become the first milestone towards 2.10.<\/p>\n

Following v2.10 release, we shall complete the GTK<\/span>+3 port that is required to bring back state of the art Wacom support for Windows users. When it’s done and GIMP<\/span> 3.0 is out, we shall finally be able to get started on some very exciting and much anticipated features like non-destructive editing. Please refer to Roadmap<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n

New website¶<\/a><\/h2>\n

In conjunction with the 20th anniversary we have updated and revamped the website.
\nThe vast majority of the work on the new website was done by Pat David<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The update (finally<\/em>) includes some much needed improvements such as news items<\/a> with permalinks and full RSS<\/span>\/Atom feeds<\/a>.
\nThe site is also now responsive to adapt to various screen sizes.
\nTry it on a mobile device or tablet!<\/p>\n

\nWilber Birthday Snapshot
\n<\/figure>\n


\nWilber &<\/span> Co. comics courtesy of Aryeom &<\/span> Jehan<\/a>.
\n<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week the GIMP<\/span> project celebrates its 20th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Back in 1995, University of California students, Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball, were members of the eXperimental Computing Facility, a Berkeley campus organization of undergraduate students enthusiastic about computers and programming. In June of that year, the two hinted at their intentions to write a free graphical image manipulation program as a means of giving back to the free software community.<\/p>\n

On November 21st, 20 years ago today, Peter Mattis announced the availability<\/a> of the “General Image Manipulation Program” on Usenet (later on, the acronym would be redefined to stand for the “GNU<\/span> Image Manipulation Program”). <\/p>\n

\"Wilber<\/figure>\n

Since its public release the project has been evolving in many ways as a testbed for new ideas, which was considerably assisted by adding plug-in architecture. Over the years, GIMP<\/span> amassed a huge amount of new features designed for all kinds of users and practical applications: general image editing, retouching and color grading, digital painting, graphic design, science imaging etc.<\/p>\n

Between 2006 and 2012, the team collaborated with Peter Sikking of man+machine works<\/em> to define product vision<\/a> and improve user experience. Thanks to this collaboration GIMP<\/span>’s user interface has become more conventional for professional users, and various tools have become more powerful and easy to use. But more importantly, we got a much better idea how to design good interfaces.<\/p>\n

In the past several years we’ve been working hard on porting GIMP<\/span> to a newer image processing engine called GEGL<\/span>. The switch to GEGL<\/span> made us rewrite or at least tweak pretty much every part of GIMP<\/span>’s source code. Fortunately, this work is nearing completion, and you’ll soon be able to benefit from all the changes that it’s bringing.<\/p>\n

New Releases and The Future¶<\/a><\/h2>\n

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, we released an update of the current stable version of GIMP<\/span>. Newly released GIMP<\/span> 2.8.16<\/a> features support for layer groups in OpenRaster files, fixes for layer groups support in PSD<\/span>, various user inrterface improvements, OSX<\/span> build system fixes, translation updates, and more changes.<\/p>\n

Our immediate future plans are to release first public version in the unstable 2.9.x series that will feature fully functional GEGL<\/span> port, 16\/32bit per channel processing, basic OpenEXR support, vastly improved color management implementation, new tools, on-canvas preview for many filters, and more. This release will encompass over three years of work and become the first milestone towards 2.10.<\/p>\n

Following v2.10 release, we shall complete the GTK<\/span>+3 port that is required to bring back state of the art Wacom support for Windows users. When it’s done and GIMP<\/span> 3.0 is out, we shall finally be able to get started on some very exciting and much anticipated features like non-destructive editing. Please refer to Roadmap<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n

New website¶<\/a><\/h2>\n

In conjunction with the 20th anniversary we have updated and revamped the website.
\nThe vast majority of the work on the new website was done by Pat David<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The update (finally<\/em>) includes some much needed improvements such as news items<\/a> with permalinks and full RSS<\/span>\/Atom feeds<\/a>.
\nThe site is also now responsive to adapt to various screen sizes.
\nTry it on a mobile device or tablet!<\/p>\n

\"Wilber<\/figure>\n


\nWilber &<\/span> Co. comics courtesy of Aryeom &<\/span> Jehan<\/a>.
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"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-4486","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-1am","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4727,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions\/4727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evolve.rabatmalta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}