Typically when I’m working with photos, I’m doing graphic design type work. I’ve been using GIMP for this. GIMP is meant for raster graphics editing.
You could also use Inkscape for vector graphics, or Krita for more digital painting type work. But I know all these tools are very powerful and overlap on some use cases.
Do you use any AI-type tools? I use a image upscaler called Upscayl. It works really well and works entirely locally.
Do you know of any tools that can remove backgrounds? This would help with help with the type of graphic design I do.
What other tools do you like to use as it pertains to images?
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GIMP, but mostly because I’m already used to it. I keep meaning to give Krita a go, but just haven’t had the time and energy to figure out how to do all the things I already know how to do with GIMP using it.
Pinta.
It’s like a Linux version of Paint.net
I don’t think its 3D rotation capabilities are as good, though.
GIMP, Inkscape, Krita, Upscayl, ImageMagick, Background remover AI
GIMP and Inkscape. I use GIMP for all kind of image editing off course, and use Inkscape to create logos and icons. Both great tools. I wish GIMP had a few basic shape tools too and non destructive editing. Soon we get non destructive editing in early future, but basic shape tools will be added in a later future.
I have Krita installed too, but for general purpose editing and want to replace GIMP with it. Because Krita adresses some issues I have with GIMP, but it does not feel good in editing to me. Maybe I’m just not used to it, even after years of trying over and over again. It has extensive vector layers and non destructive editing, great, but the font tool sucks.
I also have Upscayl installed since a while, to play around with upscaling images. First it was nice, but over time I’m no longer happy with it. Especially with higher end resolutions, the image contain unnatural and wrong parts that stand out.
For background removal I use GIMP. Its a manual step with the integrated background removal tool, but you have to mask areas as foreground and background. If the image is not low quality and the boundaries are not too fuzzy, then it works well “sometimes”. But I assume you ask for a more easy to use and more automated tool, preferably an AI tool right? I have such a tool bookmarked, its a browser online tool, but never used it so far: Background remover AI
As other tools, I use commandline converter and editor ImageMagick! Its nice to be able to script simple stuff and bulk edit them (20 thousand and more in a few minutes), such as crops from screenshots. Or at work I could create simple text based images out of a text file (it was for my shop back then… long time ago :-( ).
remove backgrounds? i think you could find a krita plugin for it, or just use an online website / huggingface space.
I used an ai painting pkugin before…never considered others! I’ll take a look.
My daughter and my sister 🤣🤣. I have 0 art in my body, so they do all that for me. I could say I have a great AI driven FOSS process in place, lol.
I use Gthumb for simple edits (croping, resizing, rotating…).
With ChaiNNer you can remove background, upscale (local), it’s a lot more flexible and compatible with models than Upscayl, also a little bit more complex (node based, not as complex as comfyUI). You can upscale an image with a face model and use other model for everything else in the same image.
I use Krita every time i need to edit something. It’s more than good enough for me
You can install and run Stable Diffusion locally (Pinokio is a versatile installer that can run SD and many other open-source AI tools as well). With SD you can build your own upscalers that are better than Upscayl, and do things like background removal too (in addition to prompt-based generation and such).
I’m not an artist, I just need the occasional hack job or screenshot annotation.
I loved the simple programs (this love stems from all the way back to MacPaint v1.0) and MS Paint has largely been ok for me apart from its lack of png support and only 90° rotations.
On Linux, Pinta has been fantastic but these last few years it got increasingly more crashy, to the point where it will now consistently crash within 10 seconds or two clicks, regardless of Linux distro / laptop/pc / version of Pinta. (insert “whyyyyy” meme here)
I’ve tried Krita, but it’s simply too much. Don’t even want to try installing Gimp. I am sad.
I can’t recommend Spectacle enough in that case : it does just about what you would expect, screenshots and simple editing. Very convenient, it’s the default in KDE
Image is a broad word. I would say in order of usage per year it would be Darktable, Inkscape, Hugin, GIMP, Krita… but these obviously serve different purposes.
I used to use GIMP, but Krita has gotten advanced enough to where it can replace it for most things (at least that I would use it for).
Does that include raster editing? I liked KritasUI but I’m not an artist.
That is most of what it does unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean. It can do general image manipulation stuff.
Thanks. I might check it out again. It’s been over a decade since I’ve used it.
Krita, I use it for everything, I hate gimp, it feels so bad
Krita looks more like a drawing and animation solution, whereas GIMP is an editing / manipulation solution. Or can Krita be used as an editor, too? I’m going to download later and give it a shot, but just wanted your opinion so I have better expectations.
i use it as an editor even though thats not really its use case. i just feel like gimp is far too clunky, it just feels “off” to me in comparison to photoshop
That makes sense. Thanks for the input!
I second Krita. I’ve used gimp for years but recently tried Krita and now I rarely open gimp anymore on purpose.
My biggest complaints with krita are around it not being easy to align objects and the text tool could use some love. Other than that, it feels like a great photoshop replacement
Yeah, text tool is just awful but I feel like I heard that they’re working on an update quite some time ago …
I didn’t think either were noticeably worse than in gimp for my use, but you might be comparing to a higher bar (or your use is more intricate than mine), lol.
I have quite liked the ability to turn on snapping for lining things up, and managed recently to freehand a very nearly perfect hexagon with it’s help… But I really wish there were some options for drawing polygons though… Even mspaint has the option to draw some basic shapes like stars and arrows and various polygons with just click and drag.
In general I feel like its probably KDE’s best software package outside of its DE. Know of any other super good KDE apps?
Okular is pretty great, I can’t find a package that does good annotation of PDFs built on GTK.
I use Okular all the time. I am so dense I didn’t even realize Krita and Okular were both developed by KDE…
No worries, it’s pretty hard to keep track when their naming scheme is “it has a K in it”…
Ouf, :(
I did say I was dense… lol
Except for the also outstanding KDE Connect which could just be called Konnect.
Okular is great. Kate is amazing. Kdenlive is BY FAR the most advanced FOSS video editor. I’d easily put Kdenlive above Krita, but that’s because of my particular use case.
Krita is nice overall, but I have some minor gripes with certain tools behaving unintuitively. May just be because I’m used to GIMP, but some simple stuff such as cropping a layer is not at all convenient.
I have used darktable, but doesn’t seem to fill your need as it is more a lightroom replacement than Photoshop https://www.darktable.org/
A very useful tip for technical images (i.e., lab report/research): export whatever graph you created as .svg, and do some prettifying touches in InkScape. It is faaaar easier than doing it in code.
Also, always export the .svg, even if you’re not gonna use it. You never know when you want to do a very small correction, and it will save you quite some time.
I love use tools like mermaid or plantuml. But Ive always faught with formatting (or gave up) instead of editing after the fact. Great idea?
In the same vein, I use draw.io to make architecture diagrams and flow charts.
