GIMP 3.0 has been in development for a long time, but not as long as VLC 4.0 which was announced more than three years ago and we still don't know when it will be available. VLC updates the next version of their player almost daily, but they don't post news about the work they're doing. Yes, the GNU Image Manipulation Program team reports more, who a few hours ago announced the launch of GIMP 2.99.12.
There are many who give their beta software a somewhat different numbering. Instead of adding the number of the next version accompanied by alpha or beta, what they do is put something like 2.99.12 that will become 3.0 when they start releasing the Release Candidates. That's about the little we know about the future of GIMP 3.0, which the project has made a lot of progress on GIMP 2.99.12, to the point of saying that they don't know how long it is, but they are close to releasing stable release candidates.
Some new features in GIMP 2.99.12
GIMP 2.99.12 has introduced all these new features, the details of which are in the release note:
- Core Features:
- Size of the brushes on the canvas.
- Customizable modifiers on the canvas.
- Test new Zoom behaviors.
- Improved tool pointers.
- Improving the “Fill By Line Art” detection of the Cube Fill tool again.
- Customizable checkerboard colors.
- Welcome dialog.
- Pinch gesture for more use.
- CMYK:
- Simulation data is now image data.
- Simulation change in the status bar.
- Several graphical user interfaces are now supported in the simulation.
- Export formats with new or improved CMYK support.
- New plugin API.
- Improved support for PSD, SVG, GIF, PNG, DDS, FLI, RAW Data, and new WBMP and ANI file formats.
- Script-fu:
- Script-fu's server is now a plugin of its own.
- New independent interpreter.
- Rethinking the API.
- Batch processing.
- Improvements to the macOS version and support for Wayland.
no scheduled date
At the bottom of the release note they say they can't give a date for GIMP 3.0, but they are coming. We hope they do soon. The latest stable version it is currently GIMP 2.10.32.