Emma, use 2.8.2. The official web site is http://www.gimp.org/ – they have a big download button that should give you a page saying "Download GIMP 2.8.2 – Installer for Windows XP SP3 or later". Remember to only ever download from the links endorsed by gimp.org (there have been some other sites that repackage gimp to include advertising or even worse stuff).

http://www.gimp.org/docs/ should be your first stop for help – the User Manual is very good for reference on individual tools, and they have tutorials divided into Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced sections.

Other than that, I recommend asking for specific problems, you're more likely to get help that way. And ask on the mailing list (https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list)

I am very new to GIMP. I have windows 8,64 bit, which I am also muddling through. I cannot seem to get the hang of using GIMP and have tried to download the extensions but they don't seem to show up or when I try to add them to the GIMP program, I cant find them. I am having a difficult time trying to figure out how to use GIMP - layers, channels, and editing. Any help will be greatly appreciated as to which GIMP application I should use, 2.6 or 2.8.8

The GIMP 2.8.2 is good but it is little bit slow in windows 7 with 6gb ram and i3 processor

I really appreciate the new GIMP 2.8.2 interface. I'm using Windows 7, i encountered a bug when I tried to use the Cage Tranformation tool.

I really like the new updates, they are really good. But i noticed a bug: the smudge tool and the blur tool aren't working. I had to switch programme to be able to smudge and blur parts of an image I was drawing.
But still, I really like it, way better than the older one (2.6).

Lyle, why don't you just ask the creator of the installers himself?

The mail address is available in the digital signature of the installer files, for example. Or simply join the #gimp IRC channel on irc.gimp.org and look for the nick 'ender'.

Thanks very much for all the hard work. I installed gimp-2.8.2-setup-1.exe over the top of my existing Gimp 2.8 and everything worked fine first time. No sign of any of the problems with UFRAW or performance mentioned in some of the comments here (and some things seem faster). Still takes ages to start though!

This has happened before, look in the GIMP 2.6.12 folder, there are 3 installers. The last release that didn't have a "-1" appended to it was 2.6.9.

Still very cryptic; almost like a pushed secret OS update that Micro$oft sometimes installs without telling you why. lol

Hope GIMP isn't going to the darkside on us Windows users. ;)

:)

It's not the drop shadow thing, I just checked mine after installing the new build and it still has the old values.

Probably just something specific to the Windows setup/installation process, nothing relating to the actual gimp code.

Odinbc (at GIMPChat) pointed me to the github and there it looks like they may have made dropshadow look better if I'm reading it correctly. :)

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/

Yes it was Bearsly; yet they released 2.8.2-1 just a few hours ago and I did just downlaod it (but not install it yet). I like 2.8.2; it fixed a few bugs that I worked around and now don't have to anymore. I would like to know what extra things they added to 2.8.2-1 since its around 900K bigger then 2.8.2. :)

Please! GIMP 2,8,2 was so Easy to install !

I would like to know too Corey; did download (just now) this file, but won't install it until I find out. :)

Does anyone know why "gimp-2.8.2-setup-1.exe" was added to the Windows downloads page?

Great release! Many thanks to the developers.
It's perfectly usable as it is now. Some things appear to work much better / faster. The healing tool for example.
Brush lag is fixed. Some slight "tearing" when dragging an image, but that's not a big problem for me. Zooming is OK. That's with a 16Mp image, on a quad core AMD, 8 Gig, reasonable graphics card. Win 7 64bit.

How can I do that?

I think, disabling gegl for rendering may fix this!

I appreciate the work of all developers but it's still unusable. Problem with view-port performance on windows persist. Screenshot: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/32971576/gimp.jpg

Got the UFRAW problem fixed.
Now when starting Gimp 2.8.2 64-bit in windows 7 I get errors loading file-tiff-save.exe & file-tiff-load.exe. Unable to load.
Any fixes for this?

This is awesome!
A huge thanks to the GIMP developer team, they're doing such a great job!

also, gimp.org says they're close to an official gimp.app for mac :-)

Again, I wanted to re-iterate, hyper super kudos to the developers. Only played with a few things that were issues with the initial release. All's well. Even brush lags no longer an issue anymore. Fantatic folks and if I could pat you on the back, I would. :)

Works great ! Awesome! Thanks !

Every time I update Gimp with new version UFRAW to GIMP doesn't work. Anyone have a solution to prevent this?

Thanks to Photocomix, I know what dbp.exe is (David Batch Processor). I have no need for it so just moved it out of my plugins directory and all's well. Just wanted to give you all the extra info. :)

Update: Windows build available too!

Meant dbp.exe not dpb.exe. Oh well. lol

Yeaaaaaaa; Whoopiee. Now PSPI and User filter work fine together. Only weird issue is I have an issue with dpb.exe (see attached). Doesn't appear to be an issue with GIMP itself since it works fine; only when launching so it's annoying more then anyting. :)