A week after some GIMP developers got together at the hacker gathering in the dutch swamps, a new development release is presented. GIMP version 2.3.3, dubbed “What The GIMP”, is a preview on the upcoming GIMP 2.4.

This release features the prototype of a new foreground selection tool that is being developed in cooperation with the department of Computer Science at the Freie Universität Berlin. The SIOX algorithm makes selection of foreground objects a lot easier. Instead of trying to trace the object boundary, the user now only has to specify the region of interest and some representative foreground pixels. SIOX (Simple Interactive Foreground eXtraction) does the rest. A video illustrates the work with the new tool.

More details can be found in the press release (also available in German). The source code of GIMP 2.3.3 can be downloaded from the usual places. If you want to give it a try, please read the release notes for development releases.