Week highlights: new releases of Scribus and Qtractor; GIMP 3.0rc3 is on the way; great new features coming to Inkscape; Graphite is kicking some serious ass.
GIMP
The team started planning a third release candidate for v3.0. Jehan listed the following changes that require additional testing:
- Successive layer effects now use a higher bit-depth, so the image graph has changed.
- The multi-threading code for painting has changed to fix a crasher bug that occurs during layer auto-expansion.
- The main plug-in API implementation has changed (again).
Jehan and Aryeom are also going to FOSDEM and will do two sessions in the main room on Sunday morning (February 2). The first one will cover GIMP 3.0, and the other one will be an early screening of ZeMarmot animated film produced with GIMP.
Inkscape
Perhaps the most interesting conversation about UX/UI happening in the project is likely the one in the proposal by Henrique T. M. Perticarati. I think he has some really good points there, and I frigging love his object panel proposal:
Some really nice things have been cooking on the stove lately, as in “some code available”.
Mike Kowalski is moving the document origin setting from Preferences to Document Properties:
Kaixo Gamorra has been working on multiple patches at the same time. The first one appears to provide an option to merge the menu into the titlebar. I guess it’s similar to the option that GIMP 3.0rc has.
The second patch improves the workflow for tweaking page size when starting from a template. At the moment, a quick and dirty mockup is available; more work needs to be done, but it’s ongoing.
Aman Gupta is adding a way to set the polygon’s side length from the tool properties toolbar:
Graphite’s year in review
This is the project people have been telling me about the most: Graphite is a general 2D graphics editor that started as a vector graphics editor. It’s node-based, so it’s procedural, and the graph is easily accessible. All that works directly in the browser and can be installed as a PWA.
I’ve been checking up on it for a couple of years, but never quite got to use it to its full potential (which keeps growing). I guess it’s probably time to do so because Graphite has become much more stable.
A few days ago, project founder Keavon Chambers published an annual recap and a preview of 2025. The project actually got three GSoC students last year, and all three did great work: adjustment layers and nested graphs, a new Rust library for decoding and processing .arw files from Sony digital cameras, performance improvements, and the integration of Vello, a high-performance vector graphics renderer (which probably makes Raph Levien very happy).
The plans for 2025 include building a desktop app, developing a basic animation feature set, some bitmap editing features, and some advanced procedural editing features.
Do check out the blog post. I think it’s time to give the project some serious attention.
Scribus 1.6.3
While work on v1.7.0 is still underway, the team published a bugfix release, v1.6.3. This version mainly fixes crashes and various minor annoyances and improves CMYK image importing. Upgrading makes a lot of sense to me. If you are still on v1.4 for some reason, you really should get the latest version.
Blender
The team published a preview of the work they have planned for 2025:
- A better integration of the node systems across different workflows
- New production tools aimed at small and medium-sized studios
- Faster EEVEE material shader compilation
- Non-destructive sculpting with layers and better keyboard-less workflow
- Storyboarding and basic camera editing from the VSE
There’s also various ongoing work such as the Vulkan port, layered Animation, HDR support in all the editors, etc.
The team also launched a community platform for educators.
FreeCAD
Most changes lately have been bugfixes and small improvements. The thing that stands out is a new Transform task panel, contributed by Kacper Donat as part of his grant work:
Ardour
The team spent some time tweaking the layout of the main window (the right sidebar now extends to the bottom) and making small improvements to the piano roll window introduced last week. They will also be shipping an updated General MIDI soundfont with v9.0. It should sound better but also slightly differently, so Robin has been asking for feedback.
Qtractor 1.5.2
This is a bugfix release of the audio/MIDI sequencer. The one change I would highlight is that immediate and consecutive plugin parameter changes are now merged into a single undoable command.
Artworks
Eastern Zone Designs by Terraform Studios, made with Blender and Photoshop:
Purifiers by Lera Krat, made with Blender, 3DCoat, and Substance 3D Painter:
废土区域 (Wasteland Area) by LCZ, made with Blender and Photoshop
Canyon Lands by Josh Norman, made with Blender and Photoshop
The Heart of the Street by Samet Dereli, made with Blender, Photoshop, and Quixel Megascans
Am I Lost? By Heider Ali, made with Blender and Photoshop
Patreon subscribers get early access to my posts. If you are feeling generous, you can also make a one-time donation on BuyMeACoffee.
