While Adobe stretches the Photoshop brand into many different programs, the popular open-source alternative: GIMP, continues to catch up to the features of the world’s best image editing tool.

Despite only having a decimal increase, the developers could have very well called this new version of Gimp 3.0, and no one would complain. Not only does it have a new look, thanks to the Tango-styled icons, but also comes with a plethora of new features:

• Scalable Brushes
• Selection Tools
• Foreground Select Tool
• Align Tool
• Changes in menus
• Improved display when zooming in or out
• Support for file formats
• Fullscreen Editing
• Color Management and Soft-proofing
• New Crop Tool
• Improved Printing
• Red Eye Removal
• Perspective Clone
• Lens Distortion
• JPEG quality

Thanks to my recent experience with Ubuntu 7.10, I’ve been playing around with the 2.40 release candidate for a few years, and although it’s still no Photoshop, it can mimic very well most, if not all, of the features I use in Adobe’s “heavy” image editing program. Not to mention that it boots in just a few seconds, compared to CS3’s 30 seconds start-up time.

You can download the Gimp from the official website for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, and see the complete description of the new changes in the release notes.

Related posts:

The GIMP Tips and Tools Galore
Ubuntu 5.10 RC Released
GIMP 10th Anniversary Splash Contest
Firefox 1.5 Officially Released
Ubuntu 7.10 officially released

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