Preview: Gimp 2.6 Uses Gegl

The preview describes the major new characteristics of the free image editing software. Thanks to the new Gegl color library, Gimp 2.6 will support 32 bit color depth per channel along with the RAW file format. The file menu has been standardized. The improved free-hand selection tool now gives users the ability to correct points along a crop line by dragging the mouse. The status bar for an image with a selection shows the selection dimensions. Another special feature is that you can store the mouse pointer in a separate layer when grabbing screenshots. This means that you can re-use the same screenshot for training and just move the mouse pointer to the point of interest. The tutorial on Gimpusers.com describes the other features.

The features included in the current developer version that are on the roadmap for the future stable version are listed on the Gimp project website. A pre-release version of the next generation image editing program is due for release before the end of July, according to the announcement on the Gimp documentation mailing list a couple of days ago. Before that happens, the developers have time to tidy up their work on the new features. The current developer version is 2.5.2 (Changelog). The latest stable version 2.4.6 was released mid-June.