The GdkPixbuf library is a replacement for Imlib. GdkPixbuf provides the following: a basic data structure to provide reference-counted images; functions to load images synchronously from disk or progressively from arbitrary data buffers; and convenience functions to transform pixbufs and render them to drawables.
GdkPixbuf uses Libart to apply generalized affine transformations to images. This means images can be rotated, scaled, and sheared in any way possible. Pixbufs are rendered to GDK drawables using the GdkRGB library, resulting in very high-quality color reduction and dithering.
GdkPixbuf includes a GNOME canvas item to display pixbufs inside a canvas. This canvas item supports full affine transformations in both GDK and anti-aliased modes.