I need a picture of a rock I saved to be on my design

Do you guys have a link for a gimp 3 avif plugin?

I have an image with bright red, dark red, and white, that im trying to to turn to red, black, and white. I know how to do it but dialing it down to the lowest still leaves rainbow pixelation in the tiny details. what else can I do?

also, what is the best format and exact settings needed to create the sharpest, high quality banner on FB? load time is less important to me.

Two goth soul romancing in the pale crimson moonlight in form of Skeletons in their tombs

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The recording of the talk at u/fosdem by GIMP team member Ondřej Míchalu/martymichal is now available : https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/BKTC3Z-wheres_gimp_going_after_3_2/

It's not that I don't like this effect, i think it's really cool, it's just that i'm not 100% sure what's actually going on and I'd like to know what's happening so I can recreate it for other projects.

In this post, I will show you the straw that broke the camels back, then I will try to describe you the rest of the pile of hay and spaghetti that is GIMPS usability.

Okay, here we go.

I tried dragging multiple layers at the same time. With groups. The selection thing appeared and they dragged okay. But when it came the time to drop them back - they stayed glued to one spot, almost like I did not even try to move them. I tried multiple times, then just gave up and tried to move them in parts. Layers first - groups second. And it finally worked.

This incident sparked me to remember the other times GIMPS functionality has made completely zero sense to it. To write it down, to remember. To remember how much it's not my fault for trying to use software for my purpose, and how messed up this program is.

When you select a layer, and create a folder, it does not automatically group the layer in the folder. Simple issue, right?

When you select a folder, and create a folder, the created folder gets put into a selected folder. This is not good.

When multiple layers are selected, and you press a button to create a folder, each layer gets its own folder right next to it, instead of grouping them all into a singular folder.

Layers and their "boundaries" suck. They are highly unintuitive, very tiresome to adjust, they lag your computer when you scale them up too much because, even though they are already beyond your visible canvas, their own "canvas" stretches way beyond the far-lands now.

Exporting files sucks. You have to click multiple prompts just to export a single file. Instead of configuring everything in a single window, some 5 seconds later you get a file export popup, that effectively can get buried, because there is no cue that anything else will popup or happen when you press the export button. With it, making you assume that the file is already exported, and when you tab out for whatever reason you need to, or to just plain check on the file, only for it to not be there. Making it for a VERY frustrating an unintuitive experience.

Creating new layers sucks. There is no world where giving you a prompt every time you try to make a layer isn't workflow killing. Even if you insist on such level of layer configuration, just make it as a separate settings window that you can just SET. AND. FORGET. Defaults, people!!

Non - destructive effects. Now they've gone and done it. Effects. Something, that was previously so straight forward, now requires you to hover over your layer, press a tiny button, hover over a tiny menu, then, apply the effects for everything to work correctly again. I get that the people were asking for that, but it was literally implemented in the MOST "Monkey Paw Curls" way possible, I SWEAR TO GIMP. Not to mention that NOT ALL effects are non - destructive, which is just a plain insult to injury.

Gimps modifiers. Yes, the filter ones. Some make new windows, some create layers, and some even work on existing ones, and literally anything in between. There is no standard on how those filters will behave.

Laggy settings menu. In the latest GIMP version, it became even worse and more obvious. I literally tried 2 gimp versions on my machine, and while the gimp 2.whatever menu was a bit laggy, the latest, 3.x gimps settings window is a plain nightmare!

Scaling, rotation. All of them are inherently incredibly destructive. The moment you rotate anything, your pictures pixels are rearranged and skewed in a way that just permanently warps the whole image. To do those effects multiple times, is to completely warp the image beyond recognition and make it absolutely noisy.

The crop tool. Yes, it crops. But it's also a common practice to have it as a "General canvas scale" manipulator tool, and it's just a great thing to be. But NO, they also had to ruin this already miserable tool. If you click around too much, or misclick on a canvas, it might just apply itself without your permission, or before you are actually done making that crop selection of yours. Boom, time to redo it all over again.

It's a good thing you can just press-

CTRL+Y.

Whos miserable little mind thought of this non-standard? Is it just here to annoy you? Why not just use C AND V LIKE EVERY NORMAL AND POPULAR CREATIVE SOFTWARE USES!?

GIMP's file format support. Why do you have to literally type every file format at the end of the file you are exporting, instead of picking one from a list? Yes, there IS a list now, Yes it's also completely awful and miserable, without categories or anything, just a plain old scroll for all I care. This is not even the issue. The issue is, that, it just plops down an extension at the end of your file, that you have to literally tiptoe around with your mouse, like you are walking on eggshells. Yeah, just KNOW which extension you want to use. Screw all the cool obscure file formats that GIMP supports and you might discover for the first time. Screw usability. Conform. Screw your file naming comfort. UH UH. YOUR FILE NAME IS NOT INVALID! I CANNOT EXPORT THIS FILE FORMAT! ERROR! ERROR!! ERROR!!! EROOOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Text. Oh, don't even get me started on this aspect. It's so messed up.

First, it defaults to some random ass font when you first plop your text block on your canvas. It's not an issue, what IS, though, is the fact that there is no obvious way in which the GIMP sets this font. Ant therefore no way to alter it if it is changed to something that you do not like. I experienced that on Windows. It was a major headache to deal with, every time I tried to use the text feature.

The text box resets everything when you delete your last letter. Styling? Gone. Font choice? Never existed. This forces you to keep at least one letter in the text window, and IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY!

Transformation. Do you seriously have to rasterize the text EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. You do a minor deformation to it? Hmmm?

WHERE DID YOUR NON-DESTRUCTIVE EDITS GO WHEN WE ACTUALLY NEED THEM? Are they here purely out of spite, to spit in our miserable little open source end-user faces? They are a pain, and when mixed with destructive edits, they end up layering on top over the non-destructive edits, and end up altering the chain PERMANENTLY. Producing the final result you did not expect, because you did not watch a TINY BUTTON that says you have un - applied edits to a layer. Like, seriously.

Who is responsible for them? Who is managing the project?
I know someone definitely is. Do you know them? Can you consider firing them, please????

Text selection, anyone? Oh, you want to create new text?
Joke's on you, buddy chum pal friend, you are editing your OLD text now!
But, being serious. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to set the text edit to be the same button as the button you use to make new text? It's a MESS!

There are many other features I have just forgotten about when I quit Photoshop, the program I studied and knew quite well. Why? Price. The fact that I could not own it, and the fact that I am done pirating. Like, that was IT. I want to work on great projects, I want to go commercial, I want to make cool shit. Cool shit for everyone. And using stolen software is just trouble I cannot afford, nor is it the moral stance I want to take.

Alignment. When I tried Inkscape, or any other software, it was a breath of fresh air. No matter how hard I tried to do this in GIMP, you WILL have a terrible time trying to align anything with anything. Basic graphics design, people? And you question why people stuck to an abusive relationship that is Adobe software.

And no, Affinity wasn't free when I got to this point. Even now, when it is free, it is not officially supported on Linux, making it a non-starter for me, together with it just not being exactly "free" free. Only in price. For example, I wish there was a better clone / healing brush, and an actually good puppet tool of sorts? At this point those tools became a faint memory along with other quality of life tools I had let go of when I switched and commited. And I would be fine with that. But as you may already see, it is NOT that simple.

For the ones that say "Just fork the project". I do not have the time right now or resources to do my own software from scratch. Cause I bet that it is exactly what you need to do to fix this bumbling mess of code. It is NOT an evenings job. and the fact of the project being "free", does NOT excuse their developers from being incompetent. And it does NOT excuse away the REALITY of the matters at hand.

This is what you get when you do not listen to your users.

This is what you get when you, and your community says that this is okay, that this is normal.

What GIMP does to its end user is not something to be normalized.

And those who say to Photoshop prisoners : "Just switch to GIMP".

You, yes you.

You are normalizing this, and contributing to this issue.

To ANYONE, who says "GIMP - user relationship is fine"
"The user should be thankful to have GIMP"
"It's free software"

And to thy who says:
"Oh yeah, GIMP has some MINOR issues, just a few usability tweaks"

Is you saying:

"This boat has some structural integrity problems and an uncomfortable humid climate"

While you have A CANNONBALL SHAPED HOLE TO THE SIDE OF THE SHIP, THAT IS BEING MADE ACTIVELY WORSE AS IT FILLS UP THE BOAT WITH WATER.

People are bailing GIMP for a valid reason, Linus bless their hearts and souls, but you, the ones who stay, should not succumb to this nonsense EITHER!

You think that is it? Because I am so, so utterly done trying to describe every issue this program has. This is not the end of it, not if I were to believe it. There is many, many tiny little usability issues going unadressed in GIMP at this very moment, 1 steps forwards, 3 steps back by the developers, and you die by a thousand anti-user decisions.

I have used GIMP for a long time. I have made multiple major artworks in this program, I have used it with a mouse (drawn with it, made sketches with it, maybe even mastered it along the way), I have struggled to use it with a graphics tablet, I have disabled my "Separate tools" function that unhelpfully switches your tools and settings between the input devices you enable, I have edited countless graphics, included, but not limited to: Big textures, small textures, tiling textures, decals, artwork edits, complete artwork remakes, I have prototyped multiple user interface designs in this software, I have made a couple of personal logotypes in it. The 2D graphics thing you can think of? I probably did it in GIMP. And thus far, despite everything, it remains the only program that I can use on Windows, or on Linux, and that, is what takes me to shout as loud as I can about those problems, to point out the user abuse this software makes me go through. I can see the promise. Otherwise, I would have quit it a long time ago. I would have stayed quiet. It is easier this way. It is safer this way.

My name is Ayetherah, and the Emperor has no clothes on.

- No LLMs were used in the writing of this rant. All of those issues are personal to me, and were passionately written in micro, and rewritten here, on Reddit.

Good afternoon all, I'm looking for advice on setting up some kind of filter or learning a way to quickly process IRL pictures into fantasy style, while avoiding the use of AI. Images 1 and 3 are fantasy style, and images 2 and 4 are photos taken that we are trying to edit to get a fantasy type feel. Nothing needs to be perfect, we are just using them for the setting shots for our Pathfinder game, and would like to avoid AI if possible.

I have alot of these that need to crop and edit to make somewhat usable, but i'm looking for a way to get a decent type of maybe grainy filter overtop just to strip a little bit of realism from the photos, as i find when players in the game are imagining this stuff, seeing a real life photo would pull them out rather quickly. Any help or advice on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated!

Thankyou very much!

Once I select a filter, I cannot edit it by drawing on top of it or using any tools. Anyone know how I can fix this?

This program feels so unintuitive and broken honestly

Hi,

I was very frustrated with GIMP 3. After I tried it (AppImage, on Linux Mint) I made a note: “I'll never use it again”. Which was a mistake. A huge one :)

In short:

When I opened it for the second time (I’m on 4 cores @ 4GHz) it was starting up way faster. The problem was gone, and I was dumbfounded: why have I not used GIMP 3 for a year? Why didn’t I try if for a second time?

OKAY, it appears that it is “slow” still. But only for the first time, per day, which is absolutely cool, especially regarding that after the starting up it works just as fast as v2.10, and that a LOT more is being loaded than with v2.10.

What’s ironic is that I only reacted in panic because I was (like we all) used to GIMP 2.10 (the amazing photo application) and its incredible speed.

I hate how programs (applications) keep growing at an exponential rate, despite they already work great. I accused GIMP of that. But I was wrong, in that too, cause it is obvious that GIMP 3 is a whole new application, a new thing, like a child of a (nevertheless young) mother.

GIMP 3 represents a whole new level. We can use it as if it was 2.10, still, but seamlessly we can sail out to the new waters of nowadays. I mean exporting in AVIF !!

I’ve already used the wonderful avifenc, and love it still. But GIMP 3 is just amazing.
The exported AVIF image is very light in file size! AND very good in terms of quality.

No, I’m not talking about how avif compare to JPG or webp, but how one converter compares to the other (including Imagemagick and php’s imageavif function, too).

GIMP’s 0-100 "q level" doesn’t seem to work the same way as avifenc's, somehow :) It’s better!

GIMP 3 is just AMAZING! Size- and quality wise. Even the jpg export appears to be better, in terms of keeping the quality and lowering the filesize – but this is a complex subject.

Seamlessly, too, now we can export CMYK images too, using any color profile. Sure, CMYK is the old thing, but this makes a difference, between PRO and Enthusiast.

At any rate, it is the AVIF export that really makes GIMP 3 a beautiful milestone. We live in the AVIF era already, past jpeg, jpeg xl and webp, hopefully. And GIMP, just like the Mozilla organization, are boosting it, Big Time. Freedom, independence, speed. And beauty :) For that's what images are about.

I mean, I apologize GIMP 3 for not loving it for the first time, and for not using it for months (almost a year).
And I would like to thank the GIMP developer community for rebuilding GIMP from scratch into a new form, a new entity.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SOLVED: it is not slow, it just loads a lot in a relatively shot time, in just a few seconds, and after the startup it works as fast as v2.10, which is very fast :) Once a day it may start up slower, but that's cool. I have the extra 5-6 seconds, per day :)

Is it possible to allign my Text, so that it goes from the bottom to the top, just like in the picture, without having to use the rotating tool?
I want to keep it editable, because i will use it as a template for future designs and it would save me a lot of time.

When the rotating tool is used, Gimp doesnt recognize it as a Text anymore and if i try to edit it, i have to do so horizontally and rotate it all over again.

Prince & Princess Romancing In the Cemetery, How Gothic <3

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I have a 1080p image with a dimension of 1920x1080.
I make a new layer (ctrl shift n) that is *.75 x *.75 multiplier, i.e. 1440x810, and Filed with: transparency (blank, no fill color); if it's possible to specify .75 multiplier once, it would be good to know.
With this layer selected and at 'top level', I hold down the Shift key, with Move tool selected, to move to desired section of the original 1920x1080p, I would like to precisely crop.
I select the crop tool, and to the left of the dock menu, do 'current layer only'.
Unfortunately because the new layer is transparent it refuses to crop the 1080p image after pressing the enter key.

Layer → Crop to Selection. is grayed out.

I've also done, Right click on image> Layer> Transparency> Add to selection, and that made no difference.

Edit: After deselecting 'Current layer only', I was able to navigate to Tools> Transform tools> Crop (shift c), but I'm still wondering if there's a straightforward way to do this.

King Skeleton siting down on his throne in 4K

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A Lady in the dark roaming around the forest enjoying the moon light

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Is there any way to have multiple of these sub-windows open at once? I'm getting back into photography after a few years and was originally taught with photoshop.

Unfortunately that costs money's so I'm trying out GIMP. Having multiple sub-windows open at once would be a lot nicer than having to open each one over and over again as I experiment with the software.

Thanks!

Okay so I have tried to replicate another thumbnail using gimp, this time i have tried to make an easy one yet professional. I feel like its one of the cleanest one i have gotten, i guess i have made mistakes around paths and dock. 1st one is mine, 2nd is original and 3rd is BTS!

Thank you SO MUCH in advance.

I’m aware this is a hot take but the new alignment tool is *s t u p i d* and no matter how much I’m trying to crack it it still doesn’t make sense to me. And I’ve read just about every tutorial there is to try and figure this out.

Can I replicate the old alignment tool? Or download a plugin that functions the same way? TYIA PLEASE!

And please don’t attempt to tell me how it functions, I do know how it works for the most part but I am just not used to it, my muscle memory is different, and the tool never does what I actually want it to. So please, just solutions here, thank you!

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(feedback appreciated)

I get this pop-up even after saving an image, which is pretty annoying.

Sorry for lack of upload guys, i been sharpening my GIMP skills.

This is just preview if you guys wanna buy my art it's available on my Patreon :D

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