Taking a look at the GIMP Roadmap, there are a lot of nice enhancements being planned.

I'm wondering what others think of the planned updates and how these changes might affect the way we use GIMP.

Also, with many apps/developers abandoning GTK, in favor of QT, how will that affect GIMP, going forward?

I have not read any plan to change GTK by Qt, unfortunately. As a KDE user GIMP ported to Qt would be great!

Here you can see a theme/icons candidate for GIMP gtk3 branch. The icons will be used for Inkscape too:
https://plus.google.com/105956747281909 ... nPRZ915G8t

Interesting. The inclusion of mypaint brushes, a warp tool and non destructive editing will certainly keep me quiet. Just a vanishing point tool like Photoshop's and Gimp will be complete for painters as far as I am concerned. I wonder what they mean by 100% complete. Is any tool ever really 100% complete. There are always potential improvements but after all my concerns about Gimp development, they have given painters the best deal by far here and I will be so pleased if they achieve this!

I really want the unified transform tool to replace the current scale, rotate and perspective tools. For me that's the biggest advantage of Photoshop over GIMP in terms of time savings. That said, I've been doing all my usual photoshop stuff in GIMP, which includes hundreds of photo edits, a few magazine ads, website design, and my first professional modeling shots. <3 GIMP £>

I think the unified transform tool is a great idea too. I did forget to mention that I would like to see either a return to the old style sliders or an improvement on the present ones making them easier to get hold of.

Such a simple and yet such a useful function.

i think it sounds good with the changes planned, layer masks on layer groups sounds like something i could really use and so does the on-canvas iwarp tool. but i wish the improved text handling had been prioritised - after a year of trying out new and fun text effects i'm getting a bit annoyed with some parts of the gimp text tool, for example that really silly bug that cuts off parts of the text when you use bold text. i also wish there had been some work on the brush engine planned, because now that i own a graphics tablet i can see exactly what erisian has been complaining about with 2.8 (and i really like 2.8 otherwise,despite having some problem with the sliders).

some of the things that are being worked on seem a bit unnecessary to me - like layer effects. seems too much like trying to imitate photo shop instead of finding a way for gimp to develop in its own direction. won't it slow down gimp's own unique development if the focus is on getting everything that photoshop already has?

i want to know what exactly is meant by "better support for image metadata" - anyone who can explain?

@AnMal - I believe they are planing better support for meta data such as EXIF, ICC and other relevant info about a given image.

@K1TesseraEna - I was just concerned that with the growing popularity of QT, developers will increasingly abandon GTK, leaving GIMP and GTK driven applications with smaller pool of developers. Considering the direction of GNOME, I'm hoping we don't see the same mindset and direction from those who make the decisions regarding the UI and future "look and feel" of GIMP.

Here i must disagree :
A OPTION allowing "live preview on canvas" would be a great improvement, but REPLACE the default preview with a live preview
may be a PITA :

You may check why even now , using Gegl Operations, on canvas preview sucks much more resources , require more powerful computers and even then (i have 8GB Ram ) may freeze gimp for quite long
How long depend on filter used , settings and image size , as example the canvas preview of Gegl>c2g applied to a photo ( converted to 8bit but not scaled down ) could literally take HOURS . ... (and then most will think Gimp crashed ,also because at least on win will appear a message about "gimp not responding" , even if is only busy to try to render the preview)

In few words would be a cool additional option but may be a disaster as replacement

It's so incredibly slow to build those GEGL operations previews that i hope those are not really giving a taste of what to expect from the full "on canvas preview" of Gimp future.

I thought the move to GEGL the Gimp undertook was supposed to boost its performance, so i'm wondering why is it that slow ?
I mean take by example the Cartoon GEGL operation and start to tweak the value while looking at how much time it takes for the on canvas preview to generate itself.

Then do the same with the Cartoon filter and see how very fast the changes are generated on its own preview window, or take GMIC own Cartoon operation, that has even more controls and has its own preview too and while a bit slower than the Gimp filter, see how much faster it still is than the GEGL operation .

As i wrote i too believe that the preview on canvas can not be a replacement for normal preview , because so slow

BUT on the other hand you should consider that apply a perfect preview on canvas take exactly same calculation then render the filter.

In my example is true that C2G preview on canvas may took ages, but is also true that after the preview , you will not have to wait for the filter to render

in other words as example now "X" filter normal preview require 5 seconds,but apply the filter 1 minute
On canvas preview instead will require 1 minute , but after that no waiting time for its application ... in theory even 5 seconds quicker!

Alas not in practice because the function of the preview is mainly that to quickly show the effect of different settings to allow to chose the best , maybe even at 100% zoom but allowing to chose only a little area to make preview faster
while "preview on canvas" seems no much better, as time needed , then blindly apply filter without preview and then undo if not happy, try again and so on , and on

Yes i know , and again i found useful a additional option for on canvas preview but i think can't be a replacement of usual preview , not as is now

Maybe just something as a " mark the preview zone" button added to the gegl filter gui would solve :

If you click it ,as soon you click it , you may mark (i.e.with the rectangular selector)on the canvas a limited area to preview , without modifying the selection

I believe that a (decent) preview window has 2 advantages :
1) allow to confront before/after face to face
2) allow to preview only a limited zone

but i believe the concept of on canvas preview may be easily polished to allow the same if and when required :
i already wrote about 2)
for 1,to confront the before/after face to face, a " preview to new buffer" box , to allow the display the preview somewhere else could help

Ran across an interesting article that I thought was worth sharing here.