Open Source @lemmy.ml rutrum @lm.paradisus.day 1mo ago

What's your favorite FOSS tools for image editing?

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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I use Krita every time i need to edit something. It’s more than good enough for me
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.)
- I prefer:
  
  ImagePipe: fast edit
  
  Snapseed: complex edit (not FOSS)
  
  Aves: gallery
  
  Superimage: AI upscaler (RealESRGAN)
  
  Waifu2x NCNN: AI upscaler (Waifu2x, RealCuGAN)
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/
- That's more of an inkscape replacement than a gimp/photoshop one. It's mostly about vectors, not raster images.
  
  It tries to do both.
I often use imagemagick (cli) for cropping, rotating, resizing, etc.
- 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.
  
  lmao, what?
Krita, I use it for everything, I hate gimp, it feels so bad
- 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
  
  In general I feel like its probably KDE's best software package outside of its DE. Know of any other super good KDE apps?
  
  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.
- 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
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 have used darktable, but doesn't seem to fill your need as it is more a lightroom replacement than Photoshop https://www.darktable.org/
Pinta.

It's like a Linux version of Paint.net
GIMP for most general stuff, Krita for painting and 2D animation, Aseprite for pixel everything.
- 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.
  
  Well, it still is OSS and one can still compile from source code. Or you can buy your binary. Never heard of Libresprite but looks fine if you absolutely want FOSS.
- Krita has tools for 2D animation? I need to look into that.
- Aseprite
  
  Software that should have been around for the Amiga
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]
- I'd be interested in another post on that topic :)
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.
Darktable for raw image processing
I paid 700 for Adobe Photoshop each month, and pay extra 10 each time to unlock when I open the program.
- I made a very generous donation to Krita a week ago, which was $10. They seemed happy about it.
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 Gthumb for simple edits (croping, resizing, rotating...).
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.
dd if=/dev/zero of=image.png bs=1k count=1024 conv=notrunc
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.
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 like MyPaint even though development seems dead (there hasn't been a new release in four years). I specifically like the infinite canvas when I'm working on the initial sketches. I switch to Krita when I'm ready for the final line art.
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
I use kolourpaint to make memes
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.
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.
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.

53 comments