GIMP 3.2 gives Photoshop another run for its money, with new editing tools and interface improvements

GIMP has been one of the most popular alternatives to Adobe Photoshop over the years, even though it still has some lingering usability problems. The latest GIMP 3.2 update is fixing some of those issues, along with a few other new features.

GIMP 3.2 was officially released on March 14, 2026, and while it still has a name that doubles as a derogatory term for disabled people, it does have more changes to non-destructive editing. In older versions of GIMP, most edits were destructive, meaning you could not revert the changes after they fell out of the Undo/Redo history. That has slowly changed in recent updates, though, which has helped it become a stronger alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

You can now use the non-destructive Link Layers feature to add external images, which maintain their original quality and sharpness as you scale, rotate, and transform them. For example, if you scale down a high-resolution image to a small size, and then scale it back up, it won't appear pixelated. Vector Layers are also now non-destructive, allowing you to draw shapes with adjustable fill and stroke settings.

The MyPaint Brush tool has also been overhauled in this release. It has 20 new brushes, and now automatically adjusts to your canvas zoom and rotation settings for more dynamic painting. There's a new Overwrite paint mode as well, so you can draw over existing colors without blending their transparency.

GIMP 3.2 includes a few more interface improvements, building on the overhauled design and GTK 3.0 migration from the GIMP 3.0 release . That includes keyboard shortcuts for the Shear and Flip tools, and an option for automatic light and dark mode that matches your operating system. You can also now drag and drop images onto the image tab to open them in GIMP, and the CMYK color selector now shows the total ink coverage for the specified color.

Typing in your images is also much easier than in previous releases. You can move around your text boxes, use keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+B for bold text and Shift+Ctrl+V for pasting unformatted text, and change the direction of text outlines.

Finally, there are some updates to document compatibility. More layer styles are now imported correctly when opening Photoshop's PSD files in GIMP, and exporting to DDS BC7 and SVG has been added. The latter format is mostly for documents using vector layers and other scalable data, not raster graphics.

You can download GIMP from the official website for Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you're on a Linux PC, your system's package repositories should have an updated version soon, if it's not there already. Personally, I'm still sticking to Pixelmator Pro on Mac and Krita on other platforms, but more options are always appreciated.

Source: GIMP