Edit: this news was obviously a fun 🐠 April fool! 🐟

Nevertheless some people may have noted that the merge request for this image format is real. While supporting all kind of outdated and not-too-frequent file formats is certainly not our top priority, supporting as many image formats, past and present, is within our goals. Everyone who has old image archives they want to still be able to load would understand how important this is.

Not only this, our half-joke was a good reminder that our project is fully community-led, which means features happen because contributors want to work on them.

🐡 End of Edit 🦈

Hi! I’m one of the contributor for GIMP’s development. You might be familiar with my work on moving “About GIMP” to the bottom of the help menu and other vitally important improvements to GIMP.

GIMP 3.0 was a big release, and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from users since then. While Jehan is busy with bug fixes, code review, and administrative work, he’s asked me to take over certain duties to ease the burden on him.

Therefore, I am proud to announce a new priority for GIMP 3.2: File Format support!

It’s true that GIMP already supports a wide range of images such as the very useful Esm Software PIX format. However, there are so many more types of images in the world that I believe GIMP should support. Supporting all image formats - no matter how supposedly “obscure” - is crucial to maintaining access to our shared digital culture. The first format in this new campaign is Jeff’s Image Format!

Jeff’s Image Format is a variation of the GIF standard, created in the late 1990s. It was intended to get around potential legal issues with the patented LZW compression used in GIFs, by using a LZ77-derived compression instead. The format is otherwise nearly identical to GIF (save for the JIFF99a magic number), making it an easy target for import support in GIMP. Furthermore, it helps you to be right no matter how you pronounce GIF!

While you’ll have to wait until GIMP 3.2 to experience importing JIF images, you can check out the merge request for Jeff’s Image Format support in GIMP to tide yourself over until that glorious day! If you have any sample images you’d like to contribute, please share on the issue tracker.

I am so proud to lead this new initiative for GIMP, and I believe it will take us (and open source image editing in general) in an exciting new direction. I look forward to this journey with you all!

(At least until Jehan gets back and sees that I’ve posted this)