The preferences dialog can be accessed from the main menu, through Edit → Preferences. It lets you customize many aspects of the way GIMP works. The following sections detail the settings that you can customize, and what they affect.

All of the Preferences information is stored in a file called gimprc in your personal GIMP directory, so if you are a «power user» who would rather work with a text editor than a graphical interface, you can alter preferences by editing that file. If you do, and you are on a Linux system, then man gimprc will give you a lot of technical information about the contents of the file and what they are used for.