It came to me as a surprise but that’s right: 2.6 is out. The changelog is available here. I installed the last development version (2.5.4) and to be honest, much of the changes I am looking forward aren’t there yet.
Still, Gimp core now uses GEGL “meaning that the internal processing is being done in 32bit floating point linear light RGBA.” That’s right: less destructive color transformation. The next steps are higher image bit depth and non destructive editing. But that is for a future version.
Thanks for your good job, team 
October 2, 2008 at 2:59 am |
I’m excited about the GEGL core and what lies ahead as a result of that. I can’t wait for Gimp 2.6 to make it to the Ubuntu repositories. I installed it on my Windows laptop and played with it for a few minutes. I’d like to be able to spend more time with it though and see what’s really different. I did see that you get a preview on the desaturate operation.
October 2, 2008 at 11:54 am |
It is now available at Getdeb for Hardy 32 and 64:
http://www.getdeb.net/app/Gimp
It look to work fine.
October 2, 2008 at 1:00 pm |
I have bundeled the packages from getdeb for Ubuntu 32 bit and put them on my server.
http://meetthegimp.org/gimp-26-as-promised-released-on-september-31/
It was announced that this release was not about new features but about the architecture to enable new features. But there are some new nice features and a lot of eye candy in the dialogs.
October 2, 2008 at 2:52 pm |
I’m playing now for some time with the 2.5.4 cersion on OpenSuse 11.0, but there is no trace yet of the 2.6 release for my distrib
and I don’t want to compile again just to gain 1 day or two
Any way , I’m exited about the next steps, perhaps we will have some early idea of whats coming next on a development version 2.7.1 soon….
Thanks for your website Joel, and Salutations d’un Genevois éxilé au Chile
October 2, 2008 at 3:28 pm |
Looks nice, but turning on GEGL makes it quite slow for me – looks like I may have to upgrade my CPU or get a new computer before long
I really wish the GIMP devs would put in a “crop and rotate” tool (I think PS has something of the sort) that would allow you to draw a box for cropping that didn’t have to be at 90 degrees to the rest of the image…
The UI has been cleaned up nicely though, and it would certainly be nice to have 32-bit editing soon, even if it works rather slowly on my machine!
October 2, 2008 at 7:49 pm |
Tom,
Gimp 2.4 has a rotate tool that has a crop option. It’s right next to the crop tool. Will that work for you?
Bob
October 3, 2008 at 5:04 am |
Does anyone know where I can find out how to install Gimp 2.6 for Ubuntu? What I’ve found so far appears to be rather technical.
October 3, 2008 at 5:06 am |
And how long will that take 10 or 20 years!!. I’m getting sick of waiting for highend features to be put into Gimp!. We need a Professional Photo Editor for Linux desperately!.
October 3, 2008 at 5:55 am |
http://www.osnews.com/story/20350/GIMP_2_6_0_Released
I love the “Update” portion of the article. My point exactly!.
October 3, 2008 at 2:26 pm |
and Bob… exactly how much $ have you donated to the project??
How much did you spend on PS again?
October 3, 2008 at 4:08 pm |
@Randy: Look at my posting over your comment.
Go to
http://meetthegimp.org/gimp-26-as-promised-released-on-september-31/
dowload the zip file and extract into an empty folder. Open a command line shell and go to that folder with all the .deb files.
Type
sudo dpkg -i *
and enter your password. That’s all, you can delete the folder.
October 3, 2008 at 11:02 pm |
Rolf, Thanks for the tip. I did as you said and got a bunch of errors. I’ll head to the Ubu support forum to get some more help. Your instructions are probably right and it may be something on my machine.
October 4, 2008 at 1:03 am |
Rolf,
thanks for making the deb packages available. That worked out great.
Bob
October 4, 2008 at 9:39 am |
If GEGL is enabled GIMP becomes very slooooow…
October 4, 2008 at 1:13 pm |
@Randy: You may have broken a lot of dependencies with the first tries.
Good luck!
October 5, 2008 at 8:26 am |
Nice. Downloaded and running on Ubuntu, Done some work with it. GEGL doesn’t really seem to slow things down for me. Way slower under early development on 2.5. Not sure how much better data is preserved though. Waiting for higher bit depth support.
Nice new features such as levels-to-curves switch, which transfers changes made to levels into a curves dialog. Also really like some of the GEGL tools.
October 19, 2008 at 2:10 pm |
There was a comment make about PCs not being able to make Center Based selections. It seems that Gimp 2.6 now has a true Center Based circle / elliptical tool.