GIMP 3.0.6, the third maintenance update for 3.0 release series, is out today!

The new GIMP release fixed various bugs and regressions, improved flatpak support, added security updates, and back-ported some changes from the 3.1.2 and 3.1.4 DEV releases.

new brush preview toggle button

Previously, the brush previews and font previews are always rendered with light background. In the new release, it added a new toggle button (back-ported from 3.1.2) allowing to optionally follow the color theme. Meaning, when the app is in dark mode, the brush previews can be set to well fit by using a darker background.

The new GIMP 3.0.6 improved palette import. It fixed Lab & CMYK ACB palette import, and added new select source from Palette file option. Meaning that you can easily find out what palette formats that currently supported through the file chooser dialog, and hide irrelevant files by choosing a specific file format.

import palette from file

For Flatpak and Snap packages that run the image editor in sandbox environment, the release also fixed the issue that the Print dialog previously did not show the “Image Settings” tab.

Other changes include:

• Remove GIMP_ICONS_LIKE_A_BOSS environment variable.
• Show Lock Content as an undo step.
• Add alpha channel on filter merge (when necessary) and for certain transforms.
• Ability to apply NDE filters to channels.
• Make Seamless Clone tool work again (Experimental).
• Improved Photoshop brush support.
• Show frames again in animation playback process bar.
• New gimp_prop_toggle_new() API function.
• New GimpTRCType enum type.

There are as well many other fixes and changes, see the official release note for details.

Install GIMP 3.0.6

GIMP website provides official packages for Linux, Windows, macOS, which are available to download via the link below:

For Linux, either download Flatpak package, then install by running command below after enabled Flatpak support.

flatpak install drag-and-drop-flatpakref-file-here

If you’ve already installed the GIMP flatpak package, then simply run the command below to update it:

flatpak update org.gimp.GIMP

Or, select download the AppImage package, add executable permission from file properties, and run to launch the image editor.

For Ubuntu users, it’s also can be easily installed from App Center (or Ubuntu Software) via Snap package, though it’s community maintained.

For those who prefer the native .deb package, I’ve uploaded the new package into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 24.04, 25.04 and 25.10, while Ubuntu 22.04 package is on the way.

To add PPA and install GIMP, run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp-3
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gimp libgegl-0.4-0t64 -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-gimp-3"