A month or two back, I spotted that the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) had finally reached its 3.0 release. I can’t remember exactly what version number it was on when I first started using the program for digital images but I do know that it was over quarter of a century ago (late 1990s)! Small updates come reasonably often (we’re already on 3.0.2, which I’ve updated to) but bigger changes happen slowly.

The biggest practical change I’ve found so far is that you can now go back and redo the various filters that you have applied to your work. My normal process for digital photos would be to create a copy of the base layer, adjust the colour and then (after any cropping or resizing), create a copy of that layer and apply sharpening. Now I can just work on the base image but, if I decide an effect wasn’t quite right, I can go back and edit it individually without adding the extra layers. That alone makes the upgrade an essential step forward – a little time saved working on each photo will add up to a lot of time saved overall.

I expect I’ll find some other benefits of the upgrade too but that has been my starting point.