The 5 Best Features Coming to GIMP 3.0

GIMP 3.0 is set to redefine the landscape of open-source image editing with its highly anticipated release, bringing a host of innovative features that cater to both amateur and professional artists and photographers. As the long-awaited upgrade from GIMP 2.10, this new version promises a more intuitive interface, enhanced performance, and powerful tools that streamline the creative process. In this article, I’ll delve into the top five standout features debuting with the initial GIMP 3.0 release.

Video: Top 5 Features Coming to GIMP 3.0

1. Non-Destructive Editing

GIMP 2.10’s biggest limiter for professionally editing photos is that it doesn’t support non-destructive editing. In other words, every time you make a color adjustment to a photo or add a filter, the effect is directly applied to the image you’re editing and can’t be altered or adjusted at any time during your workflow.

This will change with the release of GIMP 3.0, which will see the introduction of Non-Destructive Editing.

Confirmed in the GIMP 2.99.18 Development Release Version, this upgrade will allow users to apply their adjustments or effects to their photos, then go back at any time and re-open the settings of their effects to tweak or remove settings. In my testing, this ability to go back and tweak filter or effect settings drastically improves the final edit of photos because different tools tend to interact with one another.

For example, you may add a levels adjustment followed by a saturation adjustment, with the saturation adjustment bringing out certain colors of your image that weren’t noticeable before. You then go back and tweak the levels adjustment you made to recalibrate your colors. The final result is much nicer than simply needing to live with the original levels adjustments you made prior to adding saturation.

Having non-destructive editing also means you don’t have to worry about the order you place your effects on your image. You can go back at any time and change settings to produce an optimal result.

GIMP 3.0 implements non-destructive editing through an “fx” dialog that is now attached to each layer. Simply add your effect to a layer and a small “fx” icon will appear in the layers panel next to the layer (red arrow in the above image). When you want to make a change to the effect, click the icon to see a small pop-up dialog (outlined in green in the photo), then click on the effect you want to edit. This opens the settings dialog for that effect with your last settings displayed. Tweak the settings, then click OK to reapply them.

2. Dynamic Guides (Smart Guides)

GIMP 3.0 will have “Dynamic Guides,” more commonly referred to as “Smart Guides,” that help users align objects on their canvas in real-time as those objects are clicked and dragged around the composition. This new feature was confirmed in the GIMP 2.99.18 development release.

These Dynamic Guides allow you to align objects based on their bounding boxes, displaying a guide only when bounding boxes align at certain points like the sides or center of the boxes. The objects then snap to each other at these locations.

This feature is available in other popular software like Adobe and Affinity products, as well as in other free and open source software like Inkscape.

To enable Dynamic Guides, go to the View menu and check the box labeled “Snap to Bounding Boxes” (red arrow in the image above). Then, use your move tool to click and drag a layer and snap it to the bounding box of another layer. Note that you’ll want to crop your layers to their contents by going to Layer>Crop Layers to Contents. This ensures the bounding boxes of your layers are the same size as the objects within them.

The Dynamic Guides will appear as you drag a layer close to another layer (red arrow in the above photo), and the sides or centers of those layers will snap to each other.

This feature also allows you to quickly and evenly space objects on your composition. Just go to View>Snap to Equidistance, and Dynamic Guides will appear that indicate when multiple objects are evenly spaced on your canvas.

3. CMYK Support

Another huge drawback of using GIMP over other software is that it doesn’t offer any proper CMYK support. Well, with the release of GIMP 3.0 this will no longer be the case. As of the release of the GIMP 2.99.12 development release version, it is confirmed that GIMP 3.0 will have improved CMYK support.

While GIMP 3.0 won’t have FULL CMYK support, meaning you won’t technically be editing your photos in a CMYK color space, it will offer much more robust CMYK support right out of the box that will help users prepare compositions for print or send their edits off to a printing company.

That’s because GIMP 3.0 will allow users to import CMYK images, import a CMYK color profile for “soft-proofing,” meaning they can edit photos in an RGB color space but see what it will look like when converted to CMYK, then export their edited compositions with a CMYK color profile attached to the image (as demonstrated in the above photo). This is known as a “Late-binding CMYK workflow,” which is nearly as effective as an “Early-binding CMYK workflow,” with a key distinction being that early-binding allows you to properly edit your image in a CMYK color space (rather than attaching CMYK information at the end and editing in an RGB color space).

So, GIMP users will have a lot more capability in terms of opening CMYK images as well as exporting edited photos as CMYK images.

4. Outline Text

A major pain-point with GIMP users is that the process for adding a stroke to text is too complex and unintuitive. You have to add your text, add a selection around the text, convert the selection to a path, create a new layer, then stroke the path you drew around the text and, voila, you have stroked text.

This not only requires way too many steps and is unintuitive for new users, but it also is destructive – meaning once you apply the stroke you cannot edit it (aside from changing its color using a workaround).

In GIMP 3.0, however, this headache disappears with the introduction of the “Outline Text” feature built directly into the text tool. With this feature, which was confirmed in the GIMP 2.99.14 development release, you can now non-destructively add a stroke to your text and make adjustments to the stroke in real-time.

To use the feature, grab the Text tool from the toolbox, then click on your canvas and start typing your text. In the Tool Options, set the “Style” to “Outlined” or “Outlined and Filled” using the dropdown (red arrow in the above image).

Outline options will now appear below the dropdown (outlined in the image above), and you can make adjustments to things like the color, line-width (i.e. stroke width), and dash pattern (for making the stroke a solid line or a dashed line). You can go back at any time and make adjustments to these settings.

Adding strokes to your text and styling those strokes will now be easier than ever in GIMP 3.0!

5. Multi-Layer Features and Layer Sets

Yet another limitation of GIMP 2.10 is that you can’t select multiple layers simultaneously. Want to move multiple layers? You have to move each one individually. Want to add the same effect to multiple layers? You have to add the effect to each layer one by one. Want to delete multiple layers? You get the point.

Well, GIMP 3.0 finally addresses this issue and introduces multi-layer selection and multi-layer aware features throughout the program. Now, users can simply shift-click or ctrl-click to select multiple layers in the Layers panel, then move, delete, or add effects to those layers.

This functionality was introduced as early as GIMP 2.99.2 back in 2020, but has continued to receive updates and improvements through the latest development release version (2.99.18 at the time of this article).

Another cool feature (let’s call it a bonus feature) that results from this new functionality and is rolling out with GIMP 3.0 is something called “Layer Sets.” Layer sets are a way to tag or label multiple selected layers, then select all those tagged layers simultaneously at any point during your workflow. It’s kind of like layer groups, but without needing to place all the related layers together into an actual group folder in the Layers panel. This feature is useful because it can help you quickly find and select all the layers in a set.

To use this feature, select the layers you want to add to the layer set, then click the magnifying glass icon towards the top right corner of the Layers panel (red arrow in the image above). Type the name of your new layer set in the bottom text field (green arrow), then click the + icon. Your layer set will now be stored, and next time you need to select the layers from the layer set you can click the magnifying glass icon and click on the stored layer set.

Final Thoughts

These are just a few of the many exciting features making their way into the (hopefully) soon to be released GIMP 3.0 stable release. There are countless improvements made to GIMP’s UI and backend code, including porting everything from GTK 2 to GTK+ 3, which should help improve GIMP’s performance and stability while making it easier for future developers to contribute. There should also continue to be improvements and updates to GIMP 3.0 for subsequent versions (with the most anticipated being vector shape tools and perhaps some kind of AI integration), as well as the creation of new plugins and extensions to extend GIMP’s capabilities.

For more information on where to download GIMP 3.0, as well as when it will be available, I recommend checking out my “GIMP 3.0 RC1 is 96% Complete, Plus Release Date Predication and Where to Download” article.”