"It is now possible for GIMP to switch precision automatically to 32 bit linear floating point, with optional dithering by default when opening JPGs and PNGs. GIMP now also asks for the desired bit-depth when exporting PNG files; without having to change the precision of the edited image."

Personal fundraiser by Øyvind Kolås to sponsor his work on GEGL, our new image processing engine, has reached $1,000! Thank you!

Meanwhile work on GIMP and GEGL continues. It's now possible to automatically promote 8-bit images to e.g. 32-bit float and dither them on loading to avoid color fidelity loss during editing. This feature is configurable — respective options are on a new "Image Import & Export" preferences page.

We are doing a week-long hackathon in Barcelona at the end of January and invite the local community to drop by!

Here's is our much belated 2016 project report. Some exciting news to follow! 

Working on different frequency scales is one of the most powerful techniques for retouching and contrast enhancement as you can learn from e.g. this tutorial by +Patrick David: https://pixls.us/articles/skin-retouching-with-wavelet-decompose/.

Until recently wavelet decomposition into multiple frequency scales was available either by manually blurring copies of the original layer (and manually changing the layer mode to Grain Extract) or by installing 3rd party plug-ins such as Wavelet Decompose and +G'MIC. This is changing now.

+Miroslav Talasek contributed a GEGL operation for wavelet decomposition and created a simple GIMP plug-in that makes use of that operation. Both the operation and the plug-in are currently available in main development branches of GEGL and GIMP respectively and will be part of the next stable GEGL release and the next unstable GIMP release (2.9.x, leading to 2.10).

There are certainly ways to improve the plug-in (like adding a checkbox to automatically generate layer masks). Please let us know what you think!

Upcoming GIMP 2.10 is featuring 16/32-bit per color channel precision support thanks to many people who worked on GEGL, our new image processing engine.

Øyvind Kolås has been working on GEGL since mid-2000s, he's the principal developer of that project with a 42% share of all changes. He is now looking for community's support to further improve this engine.

The more time he can spend on GEGL, the faster we can implement more advanced features, such as layer effects, non-destructive editing, and CMYK/spot colors support.

If you are interested to boost the development of GIMP, you can fund his work on Patreon.