GIMP 2.8 officially released (GIMP 2.8 final PPA available)

GIMP 2.8 has finally been released, as a "result of three years of hard work and collaborative development", bringing a solid amount of new features and impressive refactoring, improvements and enhancements.

What is new in GIMP 2.8?

• a new on-demand single-window mode, mode that puts together GIMP's elements into a single interface, easier to maneuver and work with (activate it under GIMP-->Windows-->check Single-Window Mode)
• Save/Save As is now defaulted to XCF (GIMP's native image format), in order to keep (or change) the original format (like for instance, PNG) when editing an image, Export must be used (GIMP-->File-->Export)
• new layer groups that allow users to organize layers in tree structures
• enhanced directly on canvas text editing with numeric control, as well as support to change the text color for a particular selection
• massive improvements on the overall rendering experience, with under-the-hood improvements and refactoring (like the port to Cairo)
• new keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+J for Shrink Wrap and Ctrl+Shift+J for Fit in Window)
• brush system improvements
• ability to save any tool as a preset and name it
• new cage transform tool that implements an interesting way of transformation with the functionality to easily warp parts of objects using an adjustable user-defined polygonal frame
• support to import JPEG2000 images and OpenRaster (ORA)
• and much, much more

How do we install GIMP 2.8 final?
Add the following PPA (Precise)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp