Random notes about Gimp 2.10

This is just a few notes to self on this tool.

• Version 2.10 is a big deal: It’s the first one to use GPU acceleration for scaling and rotation, as well as deforming of different types. No more small previews, no more sluggish response to scaling. No need to scale down images for working, because it was too slow.
• The default theme (dark) is a joke. It’s elegant, but it’s difficult to see the differences between dark grey and lighter grey, which is the difference between a layer lock being enabled or not. I went for “system”, which got me Mint colors and nice icon spacing. Doesn’t look very elegant, but hey, I now know what I’m doing.
• The default icons are a joke as well. Very sleek, but the colors are gone. Once again, it’s elegance vs. functionality. There’s a “color” option for the icon. Looks like a children’s toolbox now, but it’s much easier to find the correct tool.

Linked layers

First and foremost: Layer groups is most likely the preferred solution. In particular, I used to link between a layer with a layer mask and its duplicate with the same layer mask applied in order to resize / rotate the layer along its layer mask. This isn’t necessary anymore: Just put the layer with a layer mask inside a group, and manipulate the group instead of the layer. This is quicker than this duplicate, apply and link method, but there’s one feature still lacking: The ability to crop the layer to which the mask has been applied, and manipulate a smaller area.

Linked layers doesn’t seem to work on 2.10.14 — this seems to be a bug: Say, when linking two layers and scaling / rotating one of them, nothing happens with the other.

Solution / workaround: There are two options I know of:

• Don’t use linked layers: Put the relevant layers in a layer group, and do the scaling / rotation on the group. But that doesn’t work well for manipulating a small layer in order to apply the changes on a larger one.
• Link between a layer group (possibly with one layer) and the layers that are affected by it. This really looks like a bug workaround: Linking layers to a layer group will make the changes to the layer group apply to all other layers. But only if the manipulations are made to the layer group. Which is more or less fine, because the normal way to work is to manipulate some specific layer, and the others follow. So put that layer in a group of its own, and link the others with the group.