This is a short development update on our progress towards the first release candidate for GIMP 3.0. We recently reached the string freeze milestone. What this means is that there will be no more changes in user-facing text (like GUI labels and messages) so that translators can work on the final translations for the 3.0 release.

Progress on completing the blocking issues for 3.0 slowed over the summer due to the maintainer and some of the main developers falling ill after the Libre Graphics Meeting conference. This is why we are “late” compared to our original estimated timelines. Thankfully everyone’s feeling much better now, and work has resumed in earnest! As of this writing, we’re currently at 96% completion for the 3.0 RC1 milestone, with 11 issues remaining.

We’ll have a lot more to share in the news post for GIMP 3.0 RC1. However, here are a few highlights to show what we’ve been working on the last few months: