Roadmaps

Feature Prioritization

This page shows roughly how the core development team plans GIMP evolution. The absence of features from these roadmaps doesn’t mean we are not interested: since GIMP is developed as a community, all it takes to revise priority is for someone to contribute.

Our roadmaps are not “holy truth”, they are flexible and evolving.

The bottom line is that GIMP is what we all make of it. There is no single company or entity heading the software (code admission is based on quality and usefulness, not dictated by someone’s business).

GIMP 3.2

List of features which we will have in GIMP 3.2 (we are in feature-freeze period):

done!773. Back-end exists since 2006, UI was inadequate.doneMR !2359(except Spectral Blending features, see#14441)## GIMP 3.4

List of features for which some work was started and we hope to have in GIMP 3.4:

!2528!2522!2379andearly experiments. Also seethe main GIMP FAQfor detailsSome legacy effectsonly are supported right now). Depends on Photoshop descriptor handling (!2338).GSoC 2024 workand recent work on OpenCL in GIMP core’s GEGL ops (!2414and!2415), we may experiment re-enabling OpenCLcomment on issue 2912The Foreground selection interaction should be reworked as a tool to select particles or object borders## GIMP 3.6

List of features for which some work was started and we hope to have in GIMP 3.6:

Development Focus

We have several focus projects these days. These will happen on minor point releases (when the second number of the version increases) as micro point releases (third number increment) is for bug fixes.

The features are gathered per topic below, though they may be spread through several releases.

Non-destructive editing

Some work has been started already around new types of layers, which will also be the start point for new tools (such as a Shape Tool which makes sense as a vector tool).

Non-destructive filters

A first implementation of non-destructive filters was released in GIMP 3.0!

Note that both adjustment layers and layer effects/styles are the terminologies currently used in requests by users.

gimp-ux#240.### Animation and multi-page support

Long-term work has been done around animation concepts. It will also bring multi-page ability.

Macros (script recording)

Ultimate continuation of a work which started in GIMP 2.10 and 3.0, where we started to store parameters of every successful filter’s runs and plug-in’s runs. Same should happen for tool usage. Finally we need the proper infrastructure to allow replaying actions.

Extensions

The work was started for GIMP 3.0 for which we originally hoped to finalize the new concept of “GIMP extensions”, a new wrapper format (.gex

) which can embed plug-ins, brushes, dynamics, themes and other data, (un)installable in 1 or 2 clicks.

The core infrastructure is already present since GIMP 3.0, but we also want to make this public with a new online infrastructure, allowing third-party extension creators to upload their extensions and everyone to browse available ones.

!120Allow core to send signals for plug-ins to react### Space Invasion

“Space Invasion” is the codename for a long-lived project, started with GIMP 2.10 development, i.e. back in 2012. The concept is to make GIMP more than a sRGB editor. First we focused on anyRGB, but nowadays we are even more into anySpace support. We want to be able to edit images with CMYK backend too (right now, we can do CMYK 🗘 RGB roundtrips which is nice but not enough), also allowing random channels (e.g. spot color channels), and of course why not CIELAB images or whatever could be useful.

HDR support is definitely also a good target eventually.

Tools

We have been planning several new interesting tools or tool enhancements. Some are still only conceptual, though some already have experimental implementations which we consider not in a releasable state.

proposal in-progress### Painting

Various interesting topics have been raised across the years and would be worth investigating for improving GIMP’s painting abilities.

#1319#498though a more complete GUI solution (radial menu?) could be studied### Canvas

Since GIMP 2.10, we added some advanced canvas concept, such as the ability to see and even work off-canvas. This is still incomplete, and we still intend to add new concepts of either auto-growing layers or even infinite layers.

GUI

GIMP’s interface has always been very customizable, though it can always be improved. For instance while the “single window mode” (since 2.8) was very welcome, in many case, we wished for a mix of the single and multi window modes. Moreover a horizontal toolbar is often wished for, as well as improvements of dockable management. These are all topics which could be redesigned and worked on.

Miscellaneous

Many of these features are on contributors wishlist and can be implemented in a branch and merged into the main development branch as we go, especially since we loosened up the “no new features in stable releases” policy. Please talk to us, if you want to work on any of those.

Milestone “Future” in Gitlab

Archived Roadmaps

GIMP 3.0

The focus of this version was to complete the GTK+3 port and reduce technical debt in used technologies.

Benefits:

• Better maintained version of GTK
• Better graphics tablet support
• Better handling of HiPPI displays
• Wayland support on Linux
• Refactored code, easier to build new features upon

done****done#32- auto-growing layers arepart of gsoc 23 (#9314)done!843(GIMP 3.0)done!958:startedaspart of gsoc 23 (#9244)done!1376### GIMP 2.10.x series

The 2.10.x series coexisted with the ongoing work to port GIMP to GTK+3 and cleanup obsolete API.

We tried to backport fixes and new features to 2.10.x when we could.

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