Tom's Definitive Linux Software Roundup: Image Apps

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]ohseus[/nom]Hopefully it wont take four months for the next article.Please tel me a writer didn't actually use a lot as one word.[/citation]
Since the Linux Software Roundup isn't really time-sensitive, other articles like new product reviews and popular series like the Web Browser Grand Prix take priority. I did use 'a lot' as one word in the comments, for emphasis. BTW, 'wont' gets an apostrophe between the 'n' and the 't' and 'tel' gets a second 'l' - hey, you asked for it, nobody likes a grammar Nazi.

 

[phate]

The one omission I noticed was Wings 3d, it's a competitor to Blender and fairly mature and usable.

 

[phate]

Oh yeah and what about POV-Ray?

 

[adamovera]

@Phate:
Unfortunately POV-Ray didn't make the cut due to the fact that it is only a CLI app under Linux. Never heard of Wings 3D before, must have slipped under the radar.

 

[adamovera]

Ok all, I have updated the article as of 12/02/10 10:00pm EST to reflect gpicview (Page 3: Image Viewers), Picasa (Page 4: Image Management), MyPaint (Page 6: Drawing And Painting), and Wings 3D (Page 9: 3D Graphics And Screen Capture). Thanks to everyone for the feedback, and special thanks to restro, maxxjr, jhansonxi, and Phate for coming up with these four apps that fit our criteria from page 2.

PS - tswhitney: I can't get a copy of Maya AutoDesk 2011 for Linux, I hear it's in an RPM package, which is awesome, but I can't get my hands on it (they only give out trials for Windows and MacOSX). Good find though, thanks!

 

[shades_aus]

Still some things i'd like covered.
- How about Web Cam integration.
- I still have trouble getting USB cams in Linux to work.
- TV cards?
- Printers?
- How about Accelerated x264 stuff on older ATi cards??

 

[vittau]

I use both GIMP and Inkscape... on Windows. =P

They're great programs, be it Linux, be it Windows.

(also used a few times UFRaw as a GIMP plugin)

 

[Guest]

Don't forget Geeqie for photo management.. An awesome little app for sorting images!!

 

[Guest]

"Although this application is definitely old, it has one feature that none of the other image viewers do: search by drawing. You can draw a sketch of the image you're looking for and imgSeek will attempt to match the doodle to an image in your collection. As you can see from the screenshot below, my poor attempt to draw a tiger matched the wallpaper of a white tiger by 19.79%, the closest match in my collection. Pretty cool."

Actually, digiKam can do this too.

I use Geeqie for it's extremely fast RAW opening/viewing. Besides that, it's just another image viewer.

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

The Gimp is indeed giving the average user a boon by adding a single window option. I have compiled the testing version to try it; and though not fully implemented the single window mode is awesome!!

 

[whooleo]

Were did you get that wallpaper I must know!?!

 

[adamovera]

@shades_aus: I'm not sure how to go about doing something like that. There are too many Web cams, TV cards, and printers on the market. Throw in a ton of Linux variations, closed-source drivers from non-cooperative manufacturers, and open-source chipset drivers in various stages of completion - you end up with a situation where one solution doesn't work for all those issues. It'll take a lot more than an article to tackle uniform peripheral support.

@milly: Geeqie is covered on page 3.

@RPG_Master: How do I access that option in digiKam?

@sonuc4spuds: I cannot wait for 2.8!

@whooleo: InterfaceLift.com - I get the majority of my wallpapers there these days. Absolutely stunning stuff. Check it out, regularly.

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

@adamovera: You missed Meshlab for the 3D section. It is useful for fixing poorly made meshes and 3D scans quickly. Also the screenshot of Blender isn't of the almost finished 2.5, which is what any new user would want to use.

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

Also forgot to mention that Inkscape is soon releasing a bugfix version 0.8.1 the first bugfix ever. Early next year they are planning a release that adds multi threading and gpu acceleration, and canvas speed improvements.

 

[slipdisc]

"GIMP really is the only contender for a Photoshop replacement on Linux"

Well since Photoshop isn't available on Linux and Gimp lives up to its name by crashing every 2 minutes we can conclude that image editing on a Linux box sucks ass.
Although those hello world sample photos were pretty nice.

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

[citation][nom]slipdisc[/nom]Well since Photoshop isn't available on Linux and Gimp lives up to its name by crashing every 2 minutes we can conclude that image editing on a Linux box sucks ass.Although those hello world sample photos were pretty nice.[/citation]

First of all GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Second crashing every few minutes is not normal behaviour for the GIMP, I have been running it for several years and have never experienced a crash. This should be reported on the GIMP bug tracker if experienced with the latest stable GIMP release 2.6.11.

Blender on the other hand does crash fairly often, though not the once every several minutes described here. The crashes of especially the 2.55 (fifth beta) build of Blender (much better than earlier betas) is quite predictable, and unless you are working with and abnormally large scene doesn't affect work.

 

[Guest]

i like it.,.

 

[ngaio]

Adam, thanks for putting this together. Did you consider Rapid Photo Downloader?

 

[Guest]

Something that would have been useful to know about each tool, is whether you can IGNORE the management features. Management is evil. Anyone doing any real work will use multiple tools, and doesn't want to chase around the file system finding where the egotistic tool decided to move things. Plus, anyone with an image collection of any size does not want them stuck in someone else's scheme. Oh, sure, "user tags" - like any of these tools are so compelling that I'm going to type in a few thousand tags just to use it.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

I did not know there were so many Raw editors. Can they handle Cannon's t2i RAW format ?

I can do all my picture editing with Gimp and Inkscape. Blender is cool, but its learning curve is too high for me... BTW, I cannot believe she killed Scales... that is not a Hollywood ending.

 

[gsacks]

For children, absolutely nothing is on the same level as TuxPaint.

 

[Guest]

Ok... first you forgot MyPaint... and now you've *still* forgotten Krita...

Dude. These are the two biggest current apps in Linux painting and drawing... :/

 

[Sonic4Spuds]

@ anonymous42: I can tell you that the Import on F-Spot arranges the pix in a dated folder system. You have a choice with Shotwell whether it even moves them or just indexes them. I can't answer for the others as I haven't used them enough.

@ gsacks: That was the goal of TuxPaint

@ kronos_cornelius: I know that UFRaw handles the canon raw format (is the same for all canon cameras) and I like it much better than the other raw programs. One nice feature being that it can be installed as a plugin for GIMP (this is a separate package in linux and part of the installer in Windows).

 

[tony_hild]

Most of the softwares of the list can be found for opensuse in http: // software.opensuse.org, you can use the on-click install.

 

[tony_hild]

Most of the softwares in the list can be found for opensuse in http://software.opensuse.org, you can use the on-click install.