this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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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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[–] dinckelman 27 points 2 months ago

I use Krita every time i need to edit something. It’s more than good enough for me

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Lots of great suggestions here already

I haven't seen mobile editing mentioned yet:

  • ImageToolbox for a very good Android image editing tool

  • Fossify Gallery for some quick editing tools built into the gallery

  • While not directly for editing, Tidy on android allows for AI search locally

  • Termux for any CLI edits (imagemagick, etc.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I prefer:

  • ImagePipe: fast edit
  • Snapseed: complex edit (not FOSS)
  • Aves: gallery
  • Superimage: AI upscaler (RealESRGAN)
  • Waifu2x NCNN: AI upscaler (Waifu2x, RealCuGAN)
[–] graycube 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I often use imagemagick (cli) for cropping, rotating, resizing, etc.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

For painting from the command line, I use sed to replace data at given offsets

sed -i '1s|^.\{10\}.\{5\}|\0*****|' image.jpg

It requires decoding the jpeg in my head to get the said offsets, but the pragmatism is unbeatable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

You do the decomposition in your head to get the raw image, replace pixels, and then recompose the jpeg, taking note of the diff. That diff is what you then swap into the original with sed.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I heard about Graphite the other day. It’s nowhere near finished, but very promising. Hopefully, it becomes the FOSS of Photopea. https://editor.graphite.rs/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's more of an inkscape replacement than a gimp/photoshop one. It's mostly about vectors, not raster images.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It tries to do both.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Krita, I use it for everything, I hate gimp, it feels so bad

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I second Krita. I've used gimp for years but recently tried Krita and now I rarely open gimp anymore on purpose.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In general I feel like its probably KDE's best software package outside of its DE. Know of any other super good KDE apps?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] Iceblade02 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That makes sense. Thanks for the input!

[–] AbouBenAdhem 11 points 2 months ago

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).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

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/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Pinta.

It's like a Linux version of Paint.net

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

GIMP for most general stuff, Krita for painting and 2D animation, Aseprite for pixel everything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I forgot about Asesprite! Thats a great tool.

Aseprite was originally licensed under GPL but later made propretary. The fork of the last GPL version is called Libresprite but it doesnt have much activity, I dont think.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Aseprite

Software that should have been around for the Amiga

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Krita has tools for 2D animation? I need to look into that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I've been meaning to get into some image generation type things too. The best self hosted tool I know of is InvokeAI. I'm sure there could be a whole other post (or other community) about image generation tools.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I'd be interested in another post on that topic :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Darktable for raw image processing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I paid 700 for Adobe Photoshop each month, and pay extra 10 each time to unlock when I open the program.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I made a very generous donation to Krita a week ago, which was $10. They seemed happy about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I use Gthumb for simple edits (croping, resizing, rotating...).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] FarraigePlaisteach 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Does that include raster editing? I liked KritasUI but I’m not an artist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That is most of what it does unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean. It can do general image manipulation stuff.

[–] FarraigePlaisteach 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks. I might check it out again. It’s been over a decade since I’ve used it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

dd if=/dev/zero of=image.png bs=1k count=1024 conv=notrunc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Image removal and AI tools have an overlap, for sure. RemBG is pretty effective, which runs in many of the environments with Stable Diffusion. Bria is a recent improved model for RemBG, which I've had some good success with. It's not perfect, but it cuts out a lot of the work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

GIMP is alright. Mostly I stick to it because Krita's dependency on QT means it looks and works differently from everything else in my GNOME environment.

[–] noughtnaut 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I use kolourpaint to make memes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

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.

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