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GIMP 3.4 Promises New Project File Format, PSD Support Improvements, and More
The biggest change in GIMP 3.4 is a new project file format by default, which follows a more common “zipped XML” structure, supports multi-page and animation features, and enables faster saving by only updating parts of the file instead of the whole project every time. The binary XCF format will still be supported.
GIMP 3.4 also promises Spectral Blending support to the MyPaint Brush tool for simulating the effects of blending physical pigments in digital art, support for applying filters non-destructively to layer masks, support for using the Gradient tool non-destructively, and support for applying filters without dialogs non-destructively on non-raster layers.
Planet GNOME:
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Development Update, August 2026 - GIMP
For the past few months, we’ve been developing all kinds of features for the future GIMP 3.4 release. We noticed recently that our changelog was getting quite long - a good problem to have!
While there’s been a lot going on internally, it’s been a while since we made a public progress report. So we want to share details on some of the new features and UX improvements that’ll be available in the first development release, GIMP 3.3.2. This won’t be an exhaustive list (we have to save at least some news for the release itself!) but hopefully it will give you some insight into the current direction and progress of GIMP’s development.
OMG Ubuntu:
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GIMP is (finally) working on a new project file format - OMG! Ubuntu
Since 1997, the famed FOSS image editor has used the binary .xcf format to save projects so layers, effects and anything else can be edited and adjusted again – which doesn’t happen in a flat file export to JPEG or PNG.
But, writing in a recent development update, the team has said it’s finding “more and more limitations” in the current format.
And with major new features, like animation and multi-page documents, on GIMP’s near-term roadmap, it’s begun working on a new project file format that will use a “zipped XML” structure (commonly used by other software, including office suites).
The new project type will support faster saving as, being a fancy ‘zip’ files, only the bits that change in an edit need to be saved, not the entire thing. Potentially, that could finally bring the most long of long-requested features to GIMP users: auto-saving!