1.6.0 adds a second editor: GIMP 3.2, as a beta. If GIMP is installed where it normally
goes, the GIMP tools appear next to the Photoshop ones, and if GIMP is the only editor you
have, setting editor to gimp makes them the only tools your assistant sees.
GIMP support came out of requests to take Editmamei beyond Photoshop, and on the engineering side GIMP exposes the interfaces Editmamei needs to drive it, which some of the other editors I’ve been asked about do not.
It works differently from the Photoshop side. Editmamei starts GIMP in the background with
nothing installed into it, so you don’t watch a GIMP window change while it works. You
follow along through the previews in chat, and a copy of the latest one is written to a
file you can keep open beside the conversation. Every adjustment goes on as one of GIMP 3’s
non-destructive filters, so when you open the saved .xcf in GIMP afterwards, each curve,
level and color balance is still there to change by hand.
The beta is tone and color work: thirteen adjustments, masks for them, crop, resize,
rotate and flip, and export with the metadata removed. It can’t heal, clone, select a
subject or set text yet, and there is no undo, so crop and resize are permanent within the
session and it’s worth saving the .xcf first.
Since 1.7.0 there is a way back: checkpoints save the image’s state and restore it later, and the GIMP guide covers how to use them.
GIMP support is free and works the same in Community and Pro, because Pro’s features are Photoshop-only. The GIMP guide covers setup, and the download page has the current build.
— Alex