GIMP makes a big deal of separating the two concepts of saving your work and exporting your work. The Save command now defaults to the XCF format which preserves your text layer data This will allow you to store all the possible information GIMP has about your file, including the various layers, masks, paths, and any other content that would be lost by saving in a flattened format like JPG. Instead, it’s best to use GIMP’s native XCF file format. JPG is the most popular image format in the world, but it’s not designed to store layer data, so it won’t be good enough to store your text in an editable format.

If you want to be able to edit your text layer in a future editing session, you’ll need to save your file in a format that supports layers. If you’ve got the time, read on for an explanation of why GIMP works like this and what you can do to stop it from happening next time you need to edit text in GIMP. You can either use the Undo command until it’s editable again or re-create the whole text layer from scratch.Īs I said at the beginning, working with text in GIMP can be very difficult. If these methods didn’t work for you, then you might have accidentally converted your text into pixels, which means it’s no longer editable as text. Edit Text on canvas is hidden in the Layer properties menuEdit Text on canvas is hidden in the Layer properties menu

How to insert text in gimp