The latest version of the most popular free and open source photo editing software GIMP has brought some changes that have irked quite a few people.
Most of the normal computer users are used to of using shortcut Ctrl+S to save their work. In previous versions of GIMP when you used Ctrl+S, it used to give you the option of saving in different formats such as JPEG or PNG etc. But GIMP 2.8 has changed this popular way of saving your work. Now if you press Ctrl+S to save your work, all you can see is the option of saving your image in XCF, bzip or gzip archive file.

What is the new option to save the work in JEPG or PNG format in GIMP?
The new option to save your work as GPEG or PNG or other popular formats is to export these files using Ctl+Shift+E key. But this is not really convenient as it adds one redundant step and moreover the original work is left open unsaved which you have to kill afterwards. Some people might start changing the default way but for me, Ctrl+S is far easier and would
Duh! I want to use Ctrl+S in GIMP to save the work in JPEG or PNG
If you cannot live with the new Ctrl+Shift+E replacing your darling Ctrl+S, here is how you can force GIMP to give you option for saving in all the formats with Ctrl+S.
Open GIMP. From the Menu, go to Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts.

Now in here, search for overwrite:

Now click on this Disabled, it will be changed to New Accelerator:

Now use press Ctrl+S to assign this shortcut:

Just click on the Reassign shortcut and save it:

And that is it. Next time you use Ctrl+S, GIMP will save the file to default format and instead of saving it as xcf file. Enjoy :)
This is by far the most stupid idea by Gimp. No wonder almost no one uses linux. Just stupid.
You do realize that GIMP is a cross-platform application and they have the same keyboard shortcut on Windows as well.
I didn’t like it initially and found it confusing, but realised quite quickly that it makes a lot more sense. I make and edit an image, with layers and other fancy features and I save for later and it’s all safe. If I “save” it as a jpeg – all the extra data is lost. I end up with a flat image, which is great as an ‘end product’ but you don’t want to lose all the fancy data before the end!
I would agree, though, that maybe the first time you ctrl+s it should ask which you want as the default “Save” action.
This didn’t work.. I am going to uninstall gimp
I really like the tips and such in Its FOSS. I really find Ubuntu obnoxious as it runs slow has me constantly typing my password in. Thus I use Fedora. Luckily most of the tips apply generally, so thank you for a very good site!
Thanks for this – I just wish there was a settings option for those of us who just want the expected behaviour of save as per any other program. Its pure arrogance on the part of the dev team to force people to use their file format unless we use a non-standard three-key press to save our way. Its open source, yes… we should thank them for the tool, yes… we should use adobe if we don’t like it, yes… maybe… actually, no. I like Gimp, I’ve used it for over 10 years… mostly to fix or resize JPG or PNG images – the 2.8 onwards save system just sucks and makes no sense no matter how they try to justify it. And it slows down my workflow, so I’ve reverted to 2.6 and just use that now.
I am with you on this. There should be a user choice on this; the old method was clearly superior. It bothers me greatly that some group of talented people sat around a room and came up with this idea and then wasted more time developing it when I am sure they had better things to do with their time.