GIMP 2.9/2.10 is a radical departure from GIMP 2.8, offering:
- New precision options for high bit depth, radiometrically correct editing.
- New color management options.
- New and corrected color space decompositions, blend modes, and conversions to black and white.
- Floating point precision with unclamped editing.
GIMP has announcedversion 2.9.2 of its popular free and open source image editing software. Included in the research is 16-bit and 32-bit per color channel processing and a number of other features. Gimpshop.com is distributing the original unmodified software, obtained directly from GIMP's repository website, and does not modify it in any way. These installers comply with the original software manufacturer's policies and terms & conditions. DownloadAdmin™ is an install manager, which manages the installation of your chosen software.
Written November 2015. Updated August 2017. Please note that much of the information on this page is not valid for the recently released GIMP 2.9.6. Hopefully eventually I'll find the time to update this tutorial, but it won't be any time soon.
Introduction: high bit depth GIMP 2.9/2.10
Purpose of this guide
This user's guide introduces you to some of high bit depth GIMP's new editing capabilities that are made possible by GEGL's high bit depth processing. The guide also points out a few 'gotchas' that you should be aware of. Please keep in mind that GIMP 2.9 really is a development branch, so many things don't yet work exactly like they will work when GIMP 2.10 is released.
Useful links: the official GIMP website, builds for Windows and MAC, building GIMP on Linux
- Partha's GIMP 2.9 builds for Windows and MAC, including a portable Windows build of my patched GIMP plus information on compiling GIMP on Windows.
- Precompiled versions of high bit depth GIMP are more or less widely available for the various Linux operating systems. If you run Linux and you'd like to compile high bit depth GIMP yourself, Building GIMP for artists and photographers has step-by-step instructions.
High bit depth GIMP is a work in progress. The primary goal for the GIMP 2.10 release is full 'Geglification' of the GIMP code base.
Editing in sRGB vs editing in other color spaces
For best results when using GIMP 2.9/2.10, only edit sRGB images.
GIMP 2.8 has hard-coded sRGB parameters that make many editing operations produce wrong results for images that are in RGB working spaces other than sRGB. GIMP 2.9 does have — and almost certainly GIMP 2.10 will have — these same hard-coded sRGB parameters.
Full support for editing images in other RGB working spaces likely won't happen at least until GIMP 3.0. However, the next big change for GIMP will be the change-over from GTK+2 to GTK+3 (or GTK+4?), which is a pretty critical step as GTK+2 is on the verge of being retired. GIMP development is a volunteer effort, porting GIMP over to GEGL has required an enormous amount of work, and porting from GTK+2 to GTK+3 isn't exactly a trivial task. More GIMP developers would help a lot, so if you have any coding skills, please consider volunteering.
If you really do want to edit in color spaces other than sRGB, my patched version of GIMP 2.9 ('GIMP-CCE') allows you to edit in any well-behaved RGB working space. However, please be aware that default GIMP has quite a lot of functionality that I've removed from GIMP-CCE.
New high bit depth precision options
Menu for choosing the image precision
As shown by the screenshot below, high bit depth GIMP offers five different image precisions:
- Three integer precisions: 8-bit integer, 16-bit integer, and 32-bit integer.
- Two floating point precisions: 16-bit floating point and 32-bit floating point.
Which precision should you choose for editing?
If you have a fast computer with a lot of RAM, I recommend that you always promote your images to 32-bit floating point before you begin editing. Here's why:
- Regardless of which precision you choose, all babl/GEGL/GIMP internal processing is done at 32-bit floating point. Read that sentence three times.
- There seems to be a small speed penalty for not using 32-bit floating point precision.
- The Precision menu options dictate how much memory is used to store in RAM the results of internal calculations:
- Choosing 32-bit floating point precision allows you to take full advantage of GEGL's 32-bit floating point processing.
- If you are working on a lower-RAM machine, performance will benefit from using 16-bit floating point or integer precision, but of course the price is a loss in precision as new editing operations use the results of previous edits as stored in memory.
- On very low RAM systems, performance will benefit even more from using 8-bit integer precision. But if you use 8-bit integer precsion, you are throwing away most of the advantages of working with a high bit depth image editor.
- 64-bit precision is made available mostly to accomodate importing and exporting very high bit precision images for scientific editing. You don't gain any computational precision from using 64-bit precision for actual editing. If you choose 64-bit precision for editing, all you are really doing is wasting system RAM resources.
As discussed in Part 2 of this article, 'Using high bit depth GIMP's floating point precision for unclamped editing' (and depending on your editing style and goals), instead of 32-bit floating point precision, sometimes you might prefer using 16-bit or 32-bit integer precision. But making full use of all of high bit depth GIMP's new editing capabilities does require using floating point precision.
Sometimes people assume that floating point is 'more precise' than integer, but this isn't actually true: At any given bit-depth, integer precision is more precise than floating point precision, but uses about the same amount of RAM:
- 16-bit integer precision is more precise than 16-bit floating point precision, and the two precisions use about the same amount of RAM.
- 32-bit integer is more precise than 32-bit floating point precision, and the two precisions use about the same amount of RAM.
![Gimp 32 Bit Chip Gimp 32 Bit Chip](https://sc.filehippo.net/images/t_app-cover-l,f_auto/p/4d35b5cc-96d1-11e6-978a-00163ec9f5fa/1650668173/the-gimp_32-1.png)
Even though in theory 32-bit integer is more precise than 32-bit floating point, GEGL/GIMP's internal processing always uses 32-bit floating point precision. So for GIMP, even when you choose 32-bit integer precision, the actual precision of the editing operations is still 32-bit floating point.
Using the image precision options when exporting an image to disk
The precision menu options have another extremely important use beside dictating the precision with which the results of editing operations are held in RAM. When you export the image to disk, the precision options allow you to change the bit depth of the exported image.
For example, some image editors can't read floating point tiffs. So if you want to export an image as a tiff file that will be opened in another image editor that can only read 8-bit and 16-bit integer tiffs, and your GIMP XCF layer stack is currently using 32-bit floting point precision, you might want to change the XCF layer stack precision to 16-bit integer before exporting the tiff.
After exporting the image, don't forget to hit 'UNDO' ('Edit/Undo . . . ', or else just use the CNTL-Z keyboard shortcut) to get back to 32-bit floating point precision (or whatever other precision you were using).
New color management options
High bit depth GIMP automatically detects camera DCF information
For reasons only the camera manufacturers know, instead of embedding a proper ICC profile in camera-saved jpegs, usually they embed 'DCF' and 'maker note' information. Whenever a camera manufacturer offers the option to embed a color space that isn't officially supported by the DCF/Exif standards, each manufacturer feels free to improvise with new tags.
High bit depth GIMP does detect and assign the correct color space for most camera-saved jpegs. Like all editing software, GIMP has to play 'catch up' with new tags for new color spaces offered by new camera models.
Tell your camera manufacturer that you want proper ICC profiles embedded in your camera-saved jpegs.
Black point compensation
Unlike GIMP 2.8, GIMP 2.9 does offer black point compensation as an explicit option, and it's enabled by default.
Even though black point compensation is checked by default in high bit depth GIMP, whether you should use black point compensation partly depends on the color management settings provided by the other imaging software that you routinely use. For example, Firefox doesn't provide for black point compensation. So if one of your goals is to make sure that images look the same as displayed in various softwares, you need to make sure all the relevant color management settings match.
What is black point compensation? LCD monitors can't display 'zero light'. There's always some minimum amount of light coming from the screen. Fill your screen with a solid black image, turn out all the lights and close the doors and curtains, and you'll see what I mean.
Black point compensation compensates for the fact that RGB working spaces like sRGB allow you to produce colors (for example solid black, R=G=B=0) that are darker than your monitor can actually display. GIMP uses the LCMS2 black point compensation algorithm, which very sensibly scales the image tonality so that 'solid black' in the image file maps to 'darkest dark' in the monitor profile's color gamut.
However, depending on your monitor profile, using or not using black point compensation might not make any difference at all. The only time black point compensation makes a difference is if the Monitor profile you choose in 'Preferences/Color management' actually does have a 'higher than zero' black point.
Why some monitor profiles do and some don't have 'higher than zero' black points is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Suffice it to say that a very accurate LCD monitor profile will always have a higher than zero black point. But sometimes, and especially for consumer-grade monitors, a very accurate monitor profile will make displayed images look worse than they will when using a less accurate monitor profile.New and updated algorithms for converting to Luminance, LAB, and LCH
Converting sRGB images from Color to Black and White using Luma and Luminance
Under 'Colors/Desaturate/Desaturate' (not a typo — 'Desaturate' is one of the items under the 'Colors/Desaturate' menu), GIMP 2.9 offers five options for converting an sRGB image to black and white:
- Luminance is equal to (the Red channel times 0.213) plus (the Green channel times 0.715) plus (the Blue channel times 0.072), done on RGB encoded linearly.
- Luma (almost equivalent to the GIMP 2.8 'Luminosity' option) is equal to (the Red channel times 0.213) plus (the Green channel times 0.715) plus (the Blue channel times 0.072), but done on RGB encoded using the sRGB TRC.High bit depth GIMP's 'Luma' option uses slightly different multipliers for calculating Luma: (the Red channel times 0.222) plus (the Green channel times 0.717) plus (the Blue channel times 0.061). The GIMP 2.8 multipliers were wrong and the GIMP 2.9 multipliers are correct.
- Lightness (HSL) adds the lowest and highest RGB channel values and divides the result by two.
- Average (HSI Intensity) sums all three RGB channel values and divides the result by three.
- Value (HSV) takes the maximum of R, G, and B.
'Luminance' is short for relative luminance. Luminance is calculated using the same channel multipliers that are used to calculate Luma. The mathematical difference between calculating Luma and Luminance is as follows:
- Luma is calculated using RGB channel values that are encoded using the sRGB TRC.
- Luminance is calculated using linearized RGB channel values, producing a radiometrically correct and physically meaningful conversion from color to black and white.
Of the various options in the 'Colors/Desaturate' menu, 'Luminance' is the only physically meaningful way to convert from color to black and white. The Red, Blue, and Green Luminance/Luma channel multipliers are specific to the sRGB color space. These channel multipliers are actually the 'Y' components of the sRGB ICC profile's XYZ primaries. As you might expect, different RGB working spaces have different 'Y' values, and so the high bit depth GIMP 2.9 conversions to Luma and Luminance only produce correct results for sRGB images.
Decomposing from sRGB to LAB
Decomposing to LAB does use hard-coded sRGB parameters and so will produce wrong results in other RGB working spaces.
In GIMP 2.8, decomposing an sRGB image to LAB produced flatly wrong results.
In high bit depth GIMP, decomposing an sRGB image to LAB does produce mathematically correct results. But as of GIMP 2.9.4, if you use 'drag and drop' to pull the decomposed grayscale layers over to your sRGB layer stack, there is still a small error in the resulting RGB layer. Figure 3 below illustrates the problem:
Assuming you start with an image in the regular sRGB color space, then:
- In GIMP 2.9, decomposing a layer to LAB in GIMP 2.9 produces mathematically correct results. However, dragging the resulting grayscale channels back to the RGB XCF color stack results in a slightly wrong result. This is because the dropped grayscale layer(s), which don't have an embedded ICC profile, are assumed to be encoded using the sRGB companding curve (Tone Reproduction Curve, 'TRC'), when really they are encoded using the LAB companding curve. This is a color management problem that can be solved by enabling GIMP to do grayscale color management (all that's needed is a little developer time — did I mention that GIMP really does need more developers?).As an incredibly important aside, a mathematically correct conversion from sRGB to LAB Lightness and back to sRGB produces exactly the same thing as using GIMP 2.9's 'Colors/Desaturate/Luminance' option to change an sRGB image from color to black and white.
- In GIMP 2.8, decomposing a layer to LAB produces wildly mathematically incorrect results, and dragging the resulting channel(s) back to the RGB XCF color stack also produces wildly mathematically incorrect results. So older GIMP tutorials on using the LAB Lightness channel to convert an image to black and white won't produce anywhere near the same results when using GIMP 2.9/GIMP 2.10.
If you'd like to know more about 'LAB Lightness to black and white', the following two-part article untangles the massive amounts of confusion regarding converting an RGB image to black and white using the LAB Lightness channel:
- LAB Lightness to black and white using GIMP 2.8.
- LAB Lightness to black and white using GIMP 2.9 and PhotoShop — the typical PhotoShop tutorial on using the LAB Lightness channel to convert to black and white does produce mathematically incorrect results.
LCH: the actually useable replacement for the entirely inadequate color space known as 'HSV'
HSV ('Hue/Saturation/Value') is a sad little color space designed for fast processing on slow computers, way back in the stone age of digital processing. HSV is OK for picking colors from a color wheel. But it's really wretched for just about any other editing application, because despite the fact that 'HSV' stands for 'Hue/Saturation/Value', you actually can't adjust color and tonality separately in the HSV color space.
'LCH' stands for 'Lightness, Chroma, Hue'. LCH is mathematically derived from the CIELAB reference color space, which in turn is a perceptually uniform transform of the CIEXYZ reference color space. Unlike HSV, LCH is a physically meaningful color space that allows you to edit separately for color and tonality.
Very roughly speaking: Unreal engine 4 beta.
- LCH Lightness corresponds to HSV Value.
- LCH Chroma corresponds to HSV Saturation.
- LCH Hue corresponds to HSV Hue (the names are the same, but the two blend modes are based on very different mathematics).
- LCH Color is a combination of LCH Chroma and Hue, and corresponds to HSV Color, which is a combination of HSV Hue and Saturation (again, the names are the same, but the two blend modes are based on very different mathematics).
LCH blend modes and painting are a game-changing addition to high bit depth GIMP editing capabilities. If you'd like to see examples of what you can do with LCH, that you can't even come close to doing with HSV, I've written a couple of tutorials on using GIMP's LCH color space capabilities:
- A tutorial on GIMP's very awesome LCH Blend Modes, which shows how to use GIMP's new LCH blend modes to repair a badly damaged image, and then to colorize a black and white rendering of the image.
- Autumn colors: An Introduction to High Bit Depth GIMP's New Editing Capabilities, which shows how to use GIMP's new LCH blend modes to edit separately for color and tonality.
In GIMP 2.9, LCH calculations do use hard-coded sRGB paramters, and so will produce wrong results in other RGB working spaces.
GIMP 2.9 also provides an LCH color picker, and an LCH 'Hue-Chroma' tool, which can be used in place of the HSV color picker and 'Hue-Saturation' tool. [NEEDS A SCREENSHOT]
Current Stable Version
The current stable release of GIMP is 2.10.18 (2020-02-23).
We think your OS is Well, we don't actually know. Either JavaScript is disabled, or I am not working quite right.. So I am showing you all the options.
Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All
GIMP for Unix-like systems
If available, the official package from your Unix-like distribution is the recommended method of installing GIMP!
The flatpak build is new and has known limitations, though it will likely provide faster updates, following GIMP releases closely.
Therefore choose your installation medium according to your needs.
Therefore choose your installation medium according to your needs.
Geforce now ipad. Flatpak build available in: i386, x86-64, ARM and AArch64.
Flatpak additional instructions
The flatpak link above should open your software installer and prompt you to install GIMP. Yet it may not work out-of-the-box on some platforms since the flatpak technology is new. If that is the case, ensure flatpak is installed and if clicking the link still does not prompt to install GIMP, then manually install by command line:
flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref
Once installed, it will be made available exactly the same way as other applications (menus, desktop overview, or any specific application launch process used by your desktop).
If this is not the case, we suggest to report a bug to your desktop or distribution asking for proper support of flatpak. In the meantime, you can still run it by command line (not as the recommended method, only a workaround):
If this is not the case, we suggest to report a bug to your desktop or distribution asking for proper support of flatpak. In the meantime, you can still run it by command line (not as the recommended method, only a workaround):
flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//stable
This installation will also provide regular update. You don't have to come back on this page and install again (it will not work!) when a new version of GIMP is released. Instead if your distribution and/or desktop has a good support for flatpak, it should propose to perform updates.
Once again, if your distribution does not have proper support, you can always fall back to using the following command line:
Once again, if your distribution does not have proper support, you can always fall back to using the following command line:
flatpak update
Systems without flatpak support
GIMP can also run on Solaris and is available for the BSD family of systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Please refer to the documentation for your Unix-like system on the installation of software.
GIMP for macOS
Note: the currently available package provides GIMP 2.10.14 and has not yet updated to the latest version, GIMP 2.10.18. We're working on that, please check back later.
The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.
Supported OS: macOS 10.9 Mavericks or over
Since the 2.8.2 version, GIMP runs on OSX natively. No X11 environment is required.
Native build
The official GIMP 2.10 DMG installer (linked above) is a stock GIMP build without any add-ons. Just open the downloaded DMG and drag and drop GIMP into your 'Applications' folder.
The SHA256 hash sum for
gimp-2.10.14-x86_64-1.dmg
is: 52654d85f894834f6c134c724beff3eddf212a1bda317299314322cfeff97e52 Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.14-x86_64-1.dmg
Older Downloads
Previous installers for OSX can be found here: download.gimp.org.
Macports
An easy way to compile and install GIMP and other great Free software on your Mac is by using Macports. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages. To install gimp using Macports, you simply do
sudo port install gimp
once you have Macports installed. Last we checked, the GIMP port file pointed to the current stable release and we have reports from people who've built GIMP successfully this way.
Homebrew
Homebrew is similar to Macports and provides packages (aka formulas) to install, either by compiling them from source or by using pre-made binaries. There are indications that there is now a formula for GIMP, installable with:
brew tap homebrew/cask && brew cask install gimp
. NOTE! Please be aware that it was announced recently that Homebrew is using analytics. To turn this off in homebrew then run:
You can read more about this on Brew Analytics.
brew analytics off
You can read more about this on Brew Analytics.
Fink
Fink is a package repository that offer mostly precompiled binaries. It provides the apt-get command known to e.g. Debian and Ubuntu users, and installing GIMP is as easy as
If there's no binary package, then
sudo apt-get install gimp
once you have installed the Fink installer. If there's no binary package, then
fink install gimp
will compile GIMP from source. Disclaimer: we haven't been able to determine if it is possible to install or build recent GIMP from Fink. Last we checked, GIMP 2.6.12 appears to be the most recent GIMP package that is offered there.
GIMP for Windows
Updated on 2020-03-24: GIMP 2.10.18 installer revision 2
Fixes GEGL issue #231, which caused corrupted images once the swap file size reached 2 GiB
Fixes GEGL issue #231, which caused corrupted images once the swap file size reached 2 GiB
The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.
Supported OS: Windows 7 or over
These links download the official GIMP installer for Windows (~200 MB). The installer contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of GIMP, and will automatically use the appropriate one.
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing system. It works by downloading GIMP from a distributed network of BitTorrent users, and may improve download speed dramatically. Choosing this option will download the torrent file for the GIMP installer. You may need to install a torrent client to make use of this file. Learn more..
Hash Sum
The SHA256 hash sum for
gimp-2.10.18-setup-2.exe
is: bf6ce59587e63e1e8bab923e7dfdaa0f2c8bd3ac4d0ced602f3c063f9e32465c![Gimp 32 Bit Chip Gimp 32 Bit Chip](https://www.mindkits.co.nz/resize/SHARED/images/products/sf/parts/1/4/6/9/7/16043_-_32-bit_Propeller_Chip__SMD__copy.jpg?bw=500&bh=500)
Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.18-setup-2.exe
Older Downloads
Gimp 32 Bit Chipset
- Previous v2.10 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
- Previous v2.8 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
GIMP User Manual
These links download language-specific Windows installers for GIMP's local help. By default, they will place the help files with your GIMP installation.
Note: GIMP uses online help by default. If you want to use this local help offline, you will need to change GIMP's help settings.
- In GIMP, select [Edit] > [Preferences] > [Help System]
- For 'User manual', select 'Use a locally installed copy'
- Under 'Help Browser', you can choose between your system's web browser and GIMP's help browser plugin (if available).
See the online help for more settings.
Gimp 32 Bit Chip Tool
- Chinese Simplified (39 MB)
- Catalan (40 MB)
- Danish (39 MB)
- Dutch (39 MB)
- English (39 MB)
- English (United Kingdom) (39 MB)
- Finnish (39 MB)
- French (41 MB)
- German (41 MB)
- Greek (38 MB)
- Italian (43 MB)
- Japanese (39 MB)
- Korean (40 MB)
- Norwegian Nynorsk (35 MB)
- Portuguese Brazilian (40 MB)
- Romanian (39 MB)
- Russian (40 MB)
- Spanish (40 MB)
Source for version 2.10 (Stable)
GIMP releases available from gimp.org and its mirrors contain the source code and have to be compiled in order to be installed on your system.
For instructions, how to build GIMP from source code, please see this page.
GIMP 2.10.18 is now available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.10/. You may want to read the Release Notes for GIMP 2.10.
To allow you to check the integrity of the tarballs, here are the hashes of the latest releases:
- gimp-2.10.18.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 65bfe111e8eebffd3dde3016ccb507f9948d2663d9497cb438d9bb609e11d716
- gimp-2.10.16.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- cbf9fe9534b913a9487b00cd9710cbc569bfd71fdd2f8c321547701a7d70cbeb
- gimp-2.10.14.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- df9b0f11c2078eea1de3ebc66529a5d3854c5e28636cd25a8dd077bd9d6ddc54
- gimp-2.10.12.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 7d80b58e0784120d57d327294f6a1fda281ff51a61935c2cd764da281acaac71
- gimp-2.10.10.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 12d1f243265c7aee1f2c6e97883a5c90ddc0b19b4346cf822e24adbb6c998c77
- gimp-2.10.8.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- d849c1cf35244938ae82e521b92b720ab48b8e9ed092d5de92c2464ef5244b9b
- gimp-2.10.6.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 4ec8071f828e918384cf7bc7d1219210467c84655123f802bc55a8bf2415101f
- gimp-2.10.4.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- ffb0768de14a2631b3d7ed71f283731441a1b48461766c23f0574dce0706f192
- gimp-2.10.2.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 1cb0baaecdefe44d371a15f2739a1bcbce4682336b4ccf8eb7b587ce52c333eb
- gimp-2.10.0.tar.bz2 (sha256):
- 7fcc96fb88cb0a0595d2610f63a15dec245bb37bf9db527d37a24fb75e547de2
GIMP help files are available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/help/.
Please consider using one of the mirrors listed below.
Gimp 32 Bit Chip Download
Development snapshots
Gimp 32 Bit Chip Cookies
We now have a separate page for development versions of GIMP.
Want to check out the GIMP development release?
Get it on our development downloads page.
Get it on our development downloads page.
FTP and Web Mirrors
We had a server move a while back that caused us to lose our existing mirrors (moved from physical to virtual server and to an environment that doesn't allow FTP access). On the plus side, we are now able to offer rsync access to download.gimp.org.
If you are running one of the existing GIMP mirrors, or want to create a new one, please contact us to get your rsync credentials.