GIMP 3.0.6 has been officially launched, marking the latest stable release of the widely-used open-source image editing software available for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows. This release, which comes approximately four and a half months after GIMP 3.0.4, is packed with notable upgrades, particularly an enhancement for Photoshop brush support.
One of the standout features in GIMP 3.0.6 is the introduction of a toggle in the Brushes and Fonts dialogs, allowing users to have brush and font previews that follow the selected color theme. Additionally, the update brings an alpha channel feature for certain transforms and filter merges, improving the versatility of the program.
The Palette import functionality has also seen upgrades, including support for setting alpha values when importing image palettes. This version enhances the importing of Lab & CMYK ACB palettes and provides a filter in the import dialog to clarify which palette formats are accepted while concealing irrelevant files.
Furthermore, GIMP 3.0.6 makes significant improvements to the sensitivity of filter actions, ensuring filters operate as intended, especially those that cannot run non-destructively. It also implements automatic selection of the next entry when a palette entry is deleted and support for applying filters non-destructively on channels.
SVG exports, the Palette grid drawing, and the user interface have all been refined for a better user experience. The Text tool has been updated to enhance its behavior regarding color changes, and various bugs have been addressed, such as issues with image layers and the behavior of the Print plug-in.
For those looking to download GIMP 3.0.6, it is available directly as an AppImage universal binary for nearly any GNU/Linux distribution and can also be installed as a Flatpak from Flathub. For those interested in compiling from source, the source tarball can be obtained here.