Tools are now grouped in the toolbox by default: Section 1.2, “Tool Icons”.

Sliders now use a compact style with improved user interaction: New sliders.

Vastly improved user experience for the transformation preview: Composited preview.

Dockable areas now highlighted when a dockable dialog is being dragged.

New 3D Transform tool to rotate and pan items: Section 4.9, “3D Transform”.

Much smoother brush outline preview motion on the canvas.

Symmetry painting enhancements

Faster loading of ABR brushes: GIMP now spends a lot less time loading Photoshop’s brushes (ABR). So if you use a lot of those, the startup time will become pleasantly smaller, by order of a magnitude. The technical explanation is that GIMP used to read the stream of ABR data byte by byte, and now it uses scanline reading instead.

PSD support improvements: PSD support improvements PSD files now load faster mostly by eliminating excessive copies between the original file and the project representation inside GIMP. For large PSD files, the loading is now ~1.5 to ~2 times faster. Moreover, GIMP is now capable of loading CMYK(A) PSD files (only 8-bit per channel for now). It does so by converting pixels to RGB(A) float using sRGB as the profile which, we know, is not good enough for serious work. However, the plug-in is already using BABL formats to specify and communicate CMYK pixel format encodings with GIMP. This is a good first step towards better CMYK support. It can be improved both on its own as well as integrate with the ongoing work enabling general color-space support for BABL formats in the development branch.

Consolidated user interface for merging down and anchoring layers: Merge layers Anchor layer

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