The GIMP team has shipped GIMP 3.0.6, the latest stable micro-release, delivering a significant number of bug fixes and performance improvements. The update focuses on enhancing stability across all major platforms by backporting numerous patches from the upcoming 3.2 release candidate, allowing users to benefit from the fixes immediately.
This version brings critical workarounds for platform-specific issues. Windows users receive a patch for language-specific crashes during file operations, a problem traced to bugs in LLVM’s libc++ and Windows UCRT code. For macOS, the release resolves a crash when dragging a color to the canvas, corrects an issue causing multiple dock icons to appear, and stops windows from flashing in multi-window mode. A key bug preventing Python-based plug-ins from accessing the internet on both Windows and macOS has also been fixed.
Core usability sees notable enhancements. Developers Denis Rangelov and Michal Vašut, working with the GIMP team, devised a solution to fix an issue where a “Hand” cursor appeared over number sliders. The update also improves transparency handling for filters and transforms, particularly with JPEG images. In a welcome move, a feature from GIMP 3.1.2 that applies theme colors to the brush, font, and palette dockables has been restored, alongside a fix for a crash when changing text outline colors.
Security has been hardened in this release. The team improved security for image imports, with contributions from developers Jacob Boerema and Alx Sa. The legacy Jigsaw filter plug-in can now correctly draw on transparent layers. Under the hood, the GEGL and Babl color management engines have been updated with new versions, aiming to make GIMP’s image processing more efficient and robust.
The build process benefits from backported commits from the 3.1 development branch. This addresses issues for AppImage users, including a crash at the file dialog when a .json file is present. The Flatpak manifest has also been updated to use the latest GNOME 49 runtime.
