How to Install GIMP 2.10 in Ubuntu and Linux Mint

GIMP (in full GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free open source, powerful, and cross-platform image manipulation software that runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows plus many other operating systems.

It is highly customizable and extensible via third-party plugins. It offers advanced tools for graphic designers, photographers, graphical illustrators as well as scientists for high-quality image manipulation.

For programmers, it also supports scripted image manipulation, with multiple programming languages such as C, C++, Perl, Python, Scheme, and so much more. The latest major release of GIMP is version 2.10 which was released a few weeks ago, and there is a recent update release GIMP 2.10.2.

What’s New in GIMP 2.10

Some of the important new highlights of this release are:

• Ships in with a number of new and improved tools such as the Warp transform, the Unified transform, and the Handle transform tools.
• Color management has become a core feature.
• Improvements to histogram computation.
• Added support for HEIF image format.
• Image processing almost completely ported to GEGL.
• Uses on-canvas preview for all filters ported to GEGL.
• Improved digital painting with support for functions such as canvas rotation and flipping, symmetry painting, MyPaint brush.
• Support for several new image formats such as OpenEXR, RGBE, WebP, and HGT.
• Supports metadata viewing and editing for Exif, XMP, IPTC, and DICOM.
• Offers basic HiDPI support.
• It comes with some fresh themes: Light, Gray, Dark, and System and symbolic icons.
• Added two new filters: spherize and recursive transform, and more.

If you want to know more about GIMP 2.10 features in detail, please refer to its release note.

Install GIMP 2.10 in Ubuntu & Linux Mint

You can install or update Gimp on Ubuntu and Linux Mint using one of the following methods.

Install Gimp 2.10 Using PPA

The developer Otto Kesselgulasch maintains an unofficial PPA, which has the latest version of the Gimp program for you to install on Ubuntu 17.10 and 18.04 (16.04 builds are said to be on the way), .

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install gimp

The above PPA will install or upgrade (if you already have GIMP 2.8) to GIMP 2.10.

Install GIMP 2.10 via Snap Packages

You can also install the latest version of GIMP 2.10 on Ubuntu and Linux Mint via Snap packages as shown.

$ sudo apt-get install snapd
$ sudo snap install gimp

Install Gimp 2.10 Using Flatpak

This is the most recommended way to install GIMP 2.10 on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based Linux distributions by using the official Flatpak app on the Flathub app store.

If you don’t have support for Flatpak, then you need to enable Flatpak support first using the following commands.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install flatpak

Once you have Fltapak support, use the following command to install GIMP 2.10.

$ flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref

Once Gimp installed, if you don’t see it on the menu, you can start it using the following command.

$ flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP

Install Gimp on Ubuntu Uninstall GIMP 2.10 in Ubuntu & Linux Mint

For any reason, if you don’t like GIMP 2.10 and want to uninstall or roll back to the old stable version. To accomplish this, you need the ppa-purge program to purge the PPA from your system using the following commands.

$ sudo apt install ppa-purge
$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp

That’s all! In this article, we have explained how to install the latest version of GIMP 2.10 in Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions. If you have any questions, let us know via the feedback form below.