A new set of plugins capable of performing AI operations are now available for the GIMP 3.0 snap from the Snap Store, based on the GIMP 3.0 RC2 release. The plugins are powered by Intel’s OpenVINOTM library for AI, and include hardware acceleration support for devices with Intel® NPUs (Neural Processing Unit) and integrated or discrete Intel® GPUs.
The OpenVINOTM AI plugins provide three unique operations:
- Increasing image resolution using the super resolution plugin
- Identifying distinct features of an image using the semantic segmentation plugin
- Image generation from a text prompt using the stable diffusion plugin. For example, the image below was generated using the caption: Polar bear relaxing on the beach.
Installation
To install the GIMP 3.0 snap along with the OpenVINO AI plugins, use the following commands:
sudo snap install gimp --channel preview/stable
sudo snap install openvino-toolkit-2404 --beta
sudo snap install openvino-ai-plugins-gimp --beta
NPU Acceleration
For machines equipped with an Intel® CoreTM Ultra processor, NPU acceleration of the plugins is available by installing the intel-npu-driver snap (learn about this snap in this recent post):
sudo snap install intel-npu-driver --beta
Installing this snap will automatically deploy recent firmware to the NPU device and connect the NPU runtime libraries with the GIMP plugins. While the magnitude of acceleration will depend on your exact CPU model, this article from Intel gives a sense of what to expect for the super resolution plugin.
Note that the intel-npu-driver snap requires a relatively new Linux kernel version (6.3 or higher) to function. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS meets this requirement, as does Ubuntu 22.04 LTS updated to a newer HWE kernel (the default kernel for a new Ubuntu desktop installation). You should also ensure that non-root access to the NPU device is enabled on your system following the instructions here.
Learning More
To learn more about how to use the OpenVINOTM AI plugins within GIMP, see the READMEs from the upstream project and the GIMP 3.0 snap.
The plugins and other related snaps are available in beta for now, and we invite feedback about your experience via GitHub issues.
For issues related to packaging or installation, please raise issues in the appropriate snap packaging GitHub repository.
For bugs or issues related to GIMP, GIMP plugins, or related libraries, please use the appropriate GitHub repository instead.
| Package | Link in the Snap Store | Snap packaging GitHub repository | Upstream project GitHub repository |
|---|---|---|---|
| GIMP | gimp | snapcrafters/gimp | GNOME/gimp |
| OpenVINOTM AI Plugins for GIMP | openvino-ai-plugins-gimp | canonical/openvino-ai-plugins-gimp-snap | intel/openvino-ai-plugins-gimp |
| OpenVINOTM runtime | openvino-toolkit-2404 | canonical/openvino-toolkit-snap | openvinotoolkit/openvino |
| Intel® NPU Driver | intel-npu-driver | canonical/intel-npu-driver-snap | intel/linux-npu-driver |
If you are an application developer interested in running AI inference tasks on the Intel® NPU, please consult documentation from Intel’s OpenVINO AI/ML framework.
If you are interested in building your own snaps using the packages shown above, please refer to the snap packaging GitHub READMEs for the NPU (link to README) and OpenVINOTM (link to README) snaps for guidance.