GIMP 2.8 is another important release from a development point of view, even more that it was for 2.6. It features a big change to the user interface addressing one of the most often received complaints: the lack of a single window mode. Moreover the integration effort of GEGL library had taken a big step forward, reaching more than 90% of the GIMP core, a new powerful transformation tool, layer groups, new common options, new brushes, improved text tool, and more.
GIMP 2.8.xx supports only 8-bit of color, which is much less than what e.g. Digital cameras produce (12-bit or more). Full support for high bit depth is included with GIMP 2.10. OpenCL enables hardware acceleration for some operations. GIMP 2.8 In this updated GIMP team focuses on providing advance User Interface. GIMP 2.8.0 Features Some additional effects of GIMP are drop shadow, motion blur, noise, etc apart from various other standard effects as well as filters. Clone tool, healing brush, perspective clone tool, blur as well as sharpen tool, smudge tool, dodge plus burn tools help to a large extent for making incredible edits.
User Interface
With this new feature it will be possible to work with all the GIMP dialogs inside one big window, usually with the image(s) centered inside. No more floating panels or toolbox but the dialogs could be arranged inside this single window. This mode could be enabled or disabled all the time, even while working, and the option will be remembered through the sessions.
Figure 1.1. The new look of the single window mode
- Gimp 2.8 - The ultimate software in image processing The popular image processor GIMP in version 2.8 offers plenty of options for optimising your photos, and gives you creative freedom when creating images. GIMP 2.8 gives you a broad spectrum of editing options.
- Gimp WebP Plugin is an open-source plugin that provides Gimp with the ability to load and export WebP images. That provides Gimp with the. Gimp 2.8 or 2.9 development.
Now Save and Save as work only with xcf formats. If you want to export an image in another format, say jpg or png, you have to explicitly Export it. This enhances the workflow and lets you simply overwrite the original file or export to various other formats.
Figure 1.2. The new image workflow
A new useful image bar comes with the single window mode, which lets you switch easily between open images through the means of a tab bar with image thumbnails.
Figure 1.3. The new image bar
GIMP will make users working with two screens (one for dialogs, the other for images) happy: now it is possible to arrange the dialogs one over the other, in tabs and in columns too.
Figure 1.4. Multi column docks
GIMP Brushes, Gradients, Pattern and Palettes can be filtered and searched via tags. Tags are text labels that the user can assign to resources. With Tags the user can easily find the resources by means of an input text box. Tags can be manually assigned by the user with the same input box used for searching tags, or they can be automatically tagged using the directory name of the imported items.
Gimp 2.8 Free Download
Figure 1.5. Resource tags
Enhancements have also been made to the size entry widget, which is used for inputting most of the x, y, width, height parameters. For example, in the scale dialog it is now possible to write “50%” in the Width field to scale the image to 50% of the width. Expressions such as “30in + 40px” and “4 * 5.4in” work, too.
Figure 1.6. Math size entries
The new “Lock Pixels” option in the layers dialog can avoid undesired painting on a layer when working with several layers.
Figure 1.7. The new Lock Pixels option
Now you can move between images in single and multi window mode using the shortcuts Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown or Alt+Number.
Add support for F2 to rename items in lists.
You can now Alt+Click on layers in the Layers dialog to create a selection from it. Add, subtract and intersect modifiers Click, Shift and Ctrl+Shift keys work too. This makes it easy to compose contents of a layer based on the contents of other layers, without detours.
Since the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+E and Ctrl+Shift+E have been redirected to image export mechanisms, new keyboard shortcuts have been setup for “Shrink Wrap” and “Fit Image in Window”, namely Ctrl+J and Ctrl+Shift+J respectively.
Added Windows → Hide docks menu item that does what “Tab” does and also displays its state, which is now persistent across sessions, too.
The layer modes have been rearranged into more logical and useful groups based on the effect they have on layers. Layer modes that make the layer lighter are in one group, layer modes that make the layer darker in another group, and so forth.
In multi-window mode, you can now close the Toolbox without quitting GIMP.
Allow binding arbitrary actions to extra mouse buttons.
Now it is possible to change the application language directly from the preference menu.
Tools, Filters and Plug-ins
With this new tool is now possible to create custom bending of a selection just moving control points. This is the result of one of our Google Summer of Code 2010 students.
Figure 1.8. Cage Transform
The text tool has been enhanced to support on canvas text writing and make possible changing the attributes of a single char.
Figure 1.9. Improved text tool
It is now possible to group set of layers and treat them like an entity. It is possible to switch a group on or off and to move the group in the layers dialog. It is easy to add / remove existing layers to a group or to create / delete a layer inside the group and it is even possible to create embedded groups of groups. It is possible to apply a layer mode to a group as you do with a single layer. All this greatly improves the workflow with complex multilayer images making them easier to manage.
Figure 1.10. New layer groups
Brushes can now be rotated at will, acting on the brush option “Angle”.
Figure 1.11. Rotating brushes
The default Quick Mask color is now configurable.
The RTL mode (right to left writing) has been improved in the Text tool.
You can specify the written language in the Text Tool. This helps choosing an appropriate font, or appropriate glyphs for the selected language.
Added optional diagonal guides to the crop tool.
Added “Rule of fifths” crop guide overlay.
A Cairo based PDF exporter has been implemented. Although being somewhat simplistic, the exporter saves text, embedding fonts into the final PDF file, and attempts to convert bitmaps to vector objects.
Brush dynamics improved.
Added plug-in for loading JPEG2000 images.
Added plug-ins for X11 Mouse Cursor import and export support.
Added fundamental OpenRaster (.ora) import and export support.
Added RGB565 support to the csource plug-in.
Added a new “Create” command that allows loading a Web page directly into GIMP using Webkit.
Under the Hood
The porting of the GIMP core towards the new high bit-depth and non-destructive editing GEGL [GEGL] library has taken big steps and now more than 90% of the task is already finished.
In addition to porting color operations to GEGL, an experimental GEGL Operation tool has been added, found in the Tools menu. It enables applying GEGL operations to an image and it gives on-canvas previews of the results. The screenshot below shows this for a Gaussian Blur.
Figure 1.12. GEGL operation
Started with GIMP version 2.6, all tools rendering on canvas is now completely ported to [CAIRO]. It provides smooth antialiased graphics and improves GIMP look. Some plug-ins have been upgraded to Cairo as well. Additionally all tools now use an on-canvas progress indicator instead of the one in the statusbar.
Figure 1.13. Progress indicator
Miscellaneous
The GIMP license has been changed to (L)GPLv3+.
A lot of GIMP APIs have been rebuilt to simplify developing new scripts.
To further enhances scripting abilities, API changes to support layer groups have been made.
To allow migrating from the old tools presets system to the new one, there is a Python script, which you can download from the GIMP wiki site. However, the old tools presets are not 100% convertible to the new tool presets. For instance, brush scale from 2.6 can't be converted to brush size in 2.8.
Working with graphics tablets could be problematic due to the GTK+2 library in use. If in this case either use the older version 2.6 or wait for the up coming version 3.0 for the full GTK+3 support.
Current Stable Version
The current stable release of GIMP is 2.10.24 (2021-03-28).
Pssst... want to check out the GIMP 2.99.4 development release?
Get it on our development downloads page.
We think your OS is Well, we don't actually know. Either JavaScript is disabled, or I am not working quite right... So I am showing you all the options.
Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All
GIMP for Unix-like systems
If available, the official package from your Unix-like distribution is the recommended method of installing GIMP!
The flatpak build is new and has known limitations, though it will likely provide faster updates, following GIMP releases closely.
Therefore choose your installation medium according to your needs.
Flatpak build available in: x86-64 and AArch64 (note: i386 and ARM-32 versions used to be published, yet are now stuck at GIMP 2.10.14 and 2.10.22 respectively).
Flatpak additional instructions
The flatpak link above should open your software installer and prompt you to install GIMP. Yet it may not work out-of-the-box on some platforms since the flatpak technology is new. If that is the case, ensure flatpak is installed and if clicking the link still does not prompt to install GIMP, then manually install by command line:
flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref
Once installed, it will be made available exactly the same way as other applications (menus, desktop overview, or any specific application launch process used by your desktop).
If this is not the case, we suggest to report a bug to your desktop or distribution asking for proper support of flatpak. In the meantime, you can still run it by command line (not as the recommended method, only a workaround):
flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//stable
This installation will also provide regular update. You don't have to come back on this page and install again (it will not work!) when a new version of GIMP is released. Instead if your distribution and/or desktop has a good support for flatpak, it should propose to perform updates.
Once again, if your distribution does not have proper support, you can always fall back to using the following command line:
flatpak update
Systems without flatpak support
GIMP can also run on Solaris and is available for the BSD family of systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Please refer to the documentation for your Unix-like system on the installation of software.
GIMP for macOS
Note: the currently available package provides GIMP 2.10.22 and has not yet updated to the latest version, GIMP 2.10.24. We're working on that, please check back later.
Updated on 2021-01-31: GIMP 2.10.22 DMG revision 3
Performance improvements on Big Sur and on previous macOS versions
The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.
Supported OS: macOS 10.9 Mavericks or over
Since the 2.8.2 version, GIMP runs on OSX natively. No X11 environment is required.
Native build
The official GIMP 2.10 DMG installer (linked above) is a stock GIMP build without any add-ons. Just open the downloaded DMG and drag and drop GIMP into your 'Applications' folder.
The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.22-x86_64-3.dmg is: 844dc06731cbd8ccaa6ffd4e0c74ad49ed1ecb6ae65db71988102acb6c219d56
Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.22-x86_64-3.dmg
Older Downloads
Previous installers for OSX can be found here: download.gimp.org.
Macports
An easy way to compile and install GIMP and other great Free software on your Mac is by using Macports. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages. To install gimp using Macports, you simply do sudo port install gimp once you have Macports installed.
Last we checked, the GIMP port file pointed to the current stable release and we have reports from people who've built GIMP successfully this way.
Homebrew
Homebrew is similar to Macports and provides packages (aka formulas) to install, either by compiling them from source or by using pre-made binaries. There are indications that there is now a formula for GIMP, installable with: brew tap homebrew/cask && brew install --cask gimp.
NOTE! Please be aware that it was announced recently that Homebrew is using analytics. To turn this off in homebrew then run: brew analytics off
You can read more about this on Brew Analytics.
Fink
Fink is a package repository that offer mostly precompiled binaries. It provides the apt-get command known to e.g. Debian and Ubuntu users, and installing GIMP is as easy as sudo apt-get install gimp once you have installed the Fink installer.
If there's no binary package, then fink install gimp will compile GIMP from source.
Disclaimer: we haven't been able to determine if it is possible to install or build recent GIMP from Fink. Last we checked, GIMP 2.6.12 appears to be the most recent GIMP package that is offered there.
GIMP for Windows
Updated on 2021-04-07: GIMP 2.10.24 installer revision 3
Backported GLib fix for very slow file dialogs (issue #913) and custom GTK2 fix for non-functional Wacom Airbrush finger wheel (issue #6394).
The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.
Supported OS: Windows 7 or over
These links download the official GIMP installer for Windows (~200 MB). The installer contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of GIMP, and will automatically use the appropriate one.
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing system. It works by downloading GIMP from a distributed network of BitTorrent users, and may improve download speed dramatically. Choosing this option will download the torrent file for the GIMP installer. You may need to install a torrent client to make use of this file. Learn more...
Hash Sum
The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.24-setup-3.exe is: 5e9eabe5739523a9fc347b4614d919418f3335e7aab082a65f71705421e85e04
Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.24-setup-3.exe
Older Downloads
- Previous v2.10 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
- Previous v2.8 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
Gimp 2.8.16
GIMP User Manual
These links download language-specific Windows installers for GIMP's local help. By default, they will place the help files with your GIMP installation.
Note: GIMP uses online help by default. If you want to use this local help offline, you will need to change GIMP's help settings.
- In GIMP, select [Edit] > [Preferences] > [Help System]
- For 'User manual', select 'Use a locally installed copy'
- Under 'Help Browser', you can choose between your system's web browser and GIMP's help browser plugin (if available).
See the online help for more settings.
- Chinese Simplified (39 MB)
- Catalan (40 MB)
- Danish (39 MB)
- Dutch (39 MB)
- English (39 MB)
- English (United Kingdom) (39 MB)
- Finnish (39 MB)
- French (41 MB)
- German (41 MB)
- Greek (38 MB)
- Italian (43 MB)
- Japanese (39 MB)
- Korean (40 MB)
- Norwegian Nynorsk (35 MB)
- Portuguese Brazilian (40 MB)
- Romanian (39 MB)
- Russian (40 MB)
- Spanish (40 MB)
Source for version 2.10 (Stable)
GIMP releases available from gimp.org and its mirrors contain the source code and have to be compiled in order to be installed on your system.
For instructions, how to build GIMP from source code, please see this page.
GIMP 2.10.24 is now available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.10/. You may want to read the Release Notes for GIMP 2.10.
To allow you to check the integrity of the tarballs, here are the hashes of the latest releases:
- gimp-2.10.24.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- bd1bb762368c0dd3175cf05006812dd676949c3707e21f4e6857435cb435989e
- gimp-2.10.22.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 2db84b57f3778d80b3466d7c21a21d22e315c7b062de2883cbaaeda9a0f618bb
- gimp-2.10.20.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- e12f9f874b1a007c4277b60aa81e0b67330be7e6153e5749ead839b902fc7b3c
- gimp-2.10.18.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 65bfe111e8eebffd3dde3016ccb507f9948d2663d9497cb438d9bb609e11d716
- gimp-2.10.16.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- cbf9fe9534b913a9487b00cd9710cbc569bfd71fdd2f8c321547701a7d70cbeb
- gimp-2.10.14.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- df9b0f11c2078eea1de3ebc66529a5d3854c5e28636cd25a8dd077bd9d6ddc54
- gimp-2.10.12.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 7d80b58e0784120d57d327294f6a1fda281ff51a61935c2cd764da281acaac71
- gimp-2.10.10.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 12d1f243265c7aee1f2c6e97883a5c90ddc0b19b4346cf822e24adbb6c998c77
- gimp-2.10.8.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- d849c1cf35244938ae82e521b92b720ab48b8e9ed092d5de92c2464ef5244b9b
- gimp-2.10.6.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 4ec8071f828e918384cf7bc7d1219210467c84655123f802bc55a8bf2415101f
- gimp-2.10.4.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- ffb0768de14a2631b3d7ed71f283731441a1b48461766c23f0574dce0706f192
- gimp-2.10.2.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 1cb0baaecdefe44d371a15f2739a1bcbce4682336b4ccf8eb7b587ce52c333eb
- gimp-2.10.0.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 7fcc96fb88cb0a0595d2610f63a15dec245bb37bf9db527d37a24fb75e547de2
GIMP help files are available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/help/.
Please consider using one of the mirrors listed below.
Development snapshots
We now have a separate page for development versions of GIMP.
Gimp 2.8.20
Want to check out the GIMP 2.99.4 development release?
Get it on our development downloads page.
FTP and Web Mirrors
Gimp 2.8.22
We had a server move a while back that caused us to lose our existing mirrors (moved from physical to virtual server and to an environment that doesn't allow FTP access). On the plus side, we are now able to offer rsync access to download.gimp.org.
If you are running one of the existing GIMP mirrors, or want to create a new one, please contact us to get your rsync credentials.
- Denmark
- https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
- rsync://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
- Finland
- https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
- ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
- rsync://rsync.nic.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
- France
- http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
- rsync://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
- https://gimp.ip-connect.info/gimp/
- rsync://gimp.ip-connect.info/gimp/
- ftp://gimp.ip-connect.info/mirror/gimp/
- Germany
- https://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/
- rsync://ftp.fau.de/gimp/
- https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/
- https://artfiles.org/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- Greece
- https://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/gimp/
- Japan
- http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/
- Netherlands
- https://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/
- Philippines
- http://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/
- ftp://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/
- Poland
- https://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
- rsync://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
- gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl/1/pub/graphics/gimp/
- Sweden
- https://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
- rsync://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
- Ukraine
- https://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/
- rsync://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/
- United Kingdom
- https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- rsync://rsync.mirrorservice.org/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- https://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- ftp://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- rsync://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
- United States
- https://mirror.jaleco.com/gimp/gimp/
- https://mirror.umd.edu/gimp/gimp/
- http://gimp.cp-dev.com/
- ftp://devhost.cp-dev.com/gimp
- rsync://gimp.cp-dev.com/gimp
- https://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
- rsync://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
- https://mirrors.xmission.com/gimp/gimp/
- ftp://mirrors.xmission.com/gimp/gimp/