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Editmamei
Install

GIMP Beta

Natural-language photo editing in GIMP.

AI orchestration, not generation.

Editmamei runs GIMP 3.2 headless: a separate GIMP process working in the background, with no window and nothing installed into GIMP itself. You describe the edit to your AI assistant, it plans the steps, and GIMP’s own filters make the changes, so nothing in the photo is generated. You follow the work through previews in the chat, then open the saved .xcf in GIMP with every adjustment still live.

Set it up Read the GIMP guide

Needs GIMP 3.2. Runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, including the Flathub Flatpak.

How it works

How the GIMP version works.

  1. Step 1

    GIMP runs in the background.

    Editmamei starts GIMP’s console build as its own process and drives it directly. Nothing is added to GIMP, and a GIMP window you have open separately is a different process that won’t change.

  2. Step 2

    You follow along in the chat.

    With no window to watch, the AI shows you rendered previews in the conversation and checks its work with per-channel histograms and before/after comparisons. Each preview is also saved to a file on your disk that you can keep open and refresh.

  3. Step 3

    Every adjustment stays a live filter.

    Adjustments and effects go on as GIMP’s own non-destructive filters. The AI can re-edit or remove any of them later, and they are still live when you open the saved .xcf in GIMP. Exporting a JPEG or PNG writes a flattened copy and leaves the document as it was.

  4. Step 4

    Checkpoints instead of undo.

    Headless GIMP keeps no undo history, so crop, resize, rotate, flip, merging and flattening can’t be stepped back one at a time. A checkpoint saves the image with its live filters and restores it later. Each image keeps up to five, and they are deleted when Editmamei exits, so save an .xcf for anything you want to keep.

What the beta covers

From a single photo to a layered composite.

  • Tone and color

    Thirteen live adjustments: curves, levels, exposure, brightness and contrast, hue and saturation, color balance, color temperature, shadows and highlights, saturation, vibrance, sharpen, noise reduction and Gaussian blur. Any of them can be hidden, re-edited or removed.

  • Effects

    Vignette, black and white, motion blur, lens blur, noise and drop shadow, live and re-editable like the adjustments. When you want a layer’s filters fixed in place, they can be baked into its pixels.

  • Layers and composites

    Create, duplicate, group, reorder, move and rename layers, and set their opacity, blend mode and visibility. Merge down or flatten. Place another photo into the image as a new layer to build a composite.

  • Masks

    Confine an adjustment to a rectangle, an ellipse, or a linear or radial gradient.

  • Files and canvas

    Open JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, HEIC, XCF and most other formats GIMP reads, or start from a blank canvas. Crop, resize, rotate to any angle to straighten, flip, extend the canvas for a border, and convert between color and grayscale.

  • Saving and export

    Save an .xcf with every filter still live. Export a flattened JPEG, PNG, WebP or TIFF with the photo’s metadata removed. The .xcf keeps the original metadata, GPS location included.

See all 24 GIMP tools

What you say to it

One prompt, start to finish.

The prompt

“In GIMP, open harbor.jpg from my Pictures folder, warm it up a little, add a soft vignette, and save it as an .xcf next to the original.”

What happens

Editmamei opens the photo in the background GIMP. The AI adds a color temperature adjustment and a vignette as live filters, renders a preview to check the result and shows it to you in the chat. If the warmth overshoots, it changes that same filter rather than stacking a second one. It saves the .xcf beside the original, and when you open it in GIMP both filters are still there to adjust or switch off.

Not in the beta

What it can’t do yet.

  • Healing, cloning and content-aware retouching.
  • Subject or sky selection. Masks are geometric only: rectangles, ellipses and gradients.
  • Text layers.
  • Step-by-step undo. Checkpoints take its place.
  • Camera raw files without a raw plug-in in GIMP (darktable, RawTherapee or ART). Without one, develop the file elsewhere and open the JPEG, TIFF or PNG.

Cost and license

Fair source, under FSL-1.1-MIT.

GIMP support is free. Editmamei is fair source: its code is public under the FSL-1.1-MIT license, and each version becomes MIT-licensed two years after its release.

Setup

Set up Editmamei for GIMP.

It’s the same install whichever editor you use. Editmamei finds GIMP on its own.

  1. 1. Install GIMP 3.2.

    From gimp.org, or on Linux from your distribution or the Flathub Flatpak.

  2. 2. Install Editmamei.

    Use the install section on the home page: one-click for Claude Desktop, or npm for every other client. On Linux, use npm.

  3. 3. Restart your AI client and ask “Is GIMP ready?”

    The GIMP tools appear when GIMP 3.2 is in its usual install location. The first launch on a machine can take a few minutes while GIMP builds its font cache. After that it starts in seconds.

Requirements

  • GIMP 3.2 with Python support (every official build includes it)
  • Windows, macOS or Linux
  • Node.js 22+, only for the npm install
  • An MCP-compatible AI client

Custom setups

If GIMP is installed in a custom location, point Editmamei at it. If you also have Photoshop and want only the GIMP tools, pin the editor to GIMP.

Requirements, detection and troubleshooting are all in the GIMP guide.