GIMP 1.0 evolved gradually into the very stable and widely used 1.2 release. Three years later, as the GIMP development came closer to the next stable release, they decided that the level of fundamental change to the inner workings of the program justified calling the new stable version 2.0. GIMP 2.0.0 was released on March 23, 2004. For GIMP 2.2, the developers aimed at a short cycle, adding a number of important features that did not require instability-inducing low level changes. GIMP 2.2.0 was released on December 19, 2004. This section briefly describes the new features that were added in GIMP 2.2, as well as the features that were introduced in GIMP 2.0.

Here is a brief summary of some of the most important new features introduced in GIMP 2.2. There are many other smaller changes that long-time users will notice and appreciate (or complain about!). There are also important changes at the level of plugin programming and script-fu creating that are not covered here.