Top 7 alternative Image Editors and Converters
April 17th, 2006
A LIST OF FREE IMAGE EDITORS AND CONVERTERS
PowerBatch 2.7 – 1.6MB
- Batch renaming, resizing, converting, printing, rotating, colour adjustment, cropping.
- Crop with aspect ratio confinement.
- Built-in FTP client!
- All program files are contained in a single folder.
- Converts JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BITMAP and JPEG2000.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF.
- Contact sheets.
- Image effects.
- Add text.
Paint.net – 4.9MB
- In development.
- Clean GUI.
- Developed with help from Microsoft.
- Requires 24MB .NET Framework 1.1 to run.
- Limited layers support (cannot be moved on canvas).
Pixia 3.1 – 3.6MB
- Not much known about this one yet.
Photofiltre – 1.6MB
- Multiple images open at once.
- Many plugins.
- More than 100 filters.
- Feature packed.
FastStone Image Viewer – 2.4MB
- Convert major formats (inc. PSD).
- Lossless JPEG rotation.
- Magnifier viewing.
- EXIF support.
- Resizing, flipping, rotating, cropping, colour adjusting tools.
- Crop with aspect ratio confinement.
- Compare images side by side.
- Batch image converter/resizer.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF
Xnview – 2.1MB
- Utility for viewing and converting graphic files.
- Imports 400 graphic file formats.
- Exports 50 graphic file formats.
- EXIF.
- Copy, cut and crop.
- Brightness and contrast adjust.
- Modify number of colours.
- Filters and effects.
- Windows print (Contact Sheet) and TWAIN support.
- Supports animated GIF and multipage TIFF.
GIMP – 7.3MB (Windows version)
- Probably the best open source contender to Photoshop.
- Requires GTK+ 2 runtime environment – 3.5MB.
- Layers support.
- Difficult to get used to GUI layout (or so I’ve read).
Thanks to Tim
Stefan Mischook
Hi,
Great List! How about Irfan View?
Some IrfanView features:
-Many supported file formats, incld. .PSD
-Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
-Multi language support
-Thumbnail/preview option
-Batch conversion (with image processing)
-Multipage TIF editing
-Multimedia player
-Change color depth
-Cut/crop
- EXIF support.
-IPTC editing
-Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
-Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
-Lossless JPG rotation
-Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like “I Agree” or “Evaluation expired”
-No registry changes without user action/permission!
It’s a big favorite of mine without a lot of extra eye candy.
Hi Stef,
Here are a couple more free image editing programs that are as powerful as PhotoShop.
PhotoPlus 6.0 – Photo and Image Editing
PhotoPlus 6 is incredible image editing software that enables you to create, manipulate, and enhance photographs, bitmap graphics, and web animations. All the tools you need are provided along with handy hints to enable you to achieve totally unique results.
• Image Export Optimizer
• Photo Enhancement
• Unique Selection Options
• Image Slicing/Image Maps
• Editable Text
• Smart Shapes
http://freeserifsoftware.com/
PhotoPlus 6.0 is free. All you have to do is register it for free and you have full use of it. It is also better documented than PhotoFiltre and has lots of features.
PhotoFiltre
PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy
learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.
PhotoFilter does not have as much documentation but there are sites on the web showing you how to use it. Also many people have contributed plug-in files that can greatly enhance the editor. They can be downloaded from the PhotoFiltre website. If you have used PhotoShop you will know how to use this program right away.
http://www.photofiltre.com/
Good post boys!
also not sure if artweaver has been mentioned, but that’s a good one and its almost identical to photoshop in many ways!
[...] Although most people use Photoshop to draw or edit images there are many good free and also quite useful tools you can use. Some of them are small, fast and feature packed utilities which will do the job just fine. For business use Photoshop may be the best, for personal or nonprofessional use there are quite a few very capable programs which may help you edit photos or draw something. Of course, main point here is that programs listed here are free and there I will mention only few which I like the most.
If you need some free paint tools you will found immediately that Gimp jumps out as one of the most recommended free graphic tools. It’s not much to say that this tool comes really close to be a Photoshop alternative. Strong and capable, packed with features and expandable with many plugins available, it really can do some complex jobs for you.
No doubt Gimp is the best free photo editing and drawing tool today. Sharon Sarmiento wrote an interesting post about GIMP called "The Gimp–Free design software". The truth is not "many" people know about GIMP. It is a great tool, quite close to Photoshop with it’s features, but simply Photoshop is the tool everybody use. Well anybody used to Photoshop look and feel can also visit Scott Moschella’s Plastic bugs to learn about GIMPshop, which is a modification of GIMP and whose primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.
If you’re looking for other open source alternatives, read Your Guide to Free Open-Source Software and visit OSalt.com to find high quality open source alternatives to commercial software. But there’s more than just Gimp, Vicman Pro is now free.
At the Vicman site you can also find many other interesting free graphic tools like Mobile Photo Enhancer, JPEG Enhancer or Cartoonist. Maybe not known as much as Photoshop or Gimp, this tool has some features which could make it interesting for a home user. Small and fast, packed with interesting features it could be the perfect choice for some occasional photo editing. This tool, when I found it, was really an interesting discovery, especially because it was not free before. With a nice set of features and plugins it can be used for a lot of experimenting in editing and drawing. Pixia is also a nice graphic tool and a quite fast one.
It supports layers and transparency. There is an add-on available which enables Pixia to accept Photoshop plugins which is a nice extra feature.Originally developed in Japan by Isao Maruoka and now there are versions in English, German, French, Spanish, etc. As in their About page "It may be used in any forms, except for sale purpose". Artweaver can be used for both private and commercial purpose as stated in their FAQ, so no limitations there. Compared with many other free programs, Artweaver is adjustable and easy for novice user. For example, you can adjust size, angle, opacity of the brushes and also new brushes can be added. Supports transparency and layers, has tablet support and a collection of filters. There are many more but these are few of the best ones. Stefan Mischook has a list of Top 7 alternative Image Editors and Converters, and mentions few good and free programs not mentioned here, so take a look. Comments » [...]
Artweaver is the best Photoshop imitator so far, for me. Cusorarts Imageforge is also good. If artweaver can’t do it I’ll use imageforge and V.V.
I agree with John that IRFANVIEW is well worth including – especially as it can import and fully use Photoshop filters and virtually any other filters made for Photoshop. Irfanview, of course, is strictly for image manipulation and not for actual drawing, unlike ….
…. ARTWEAVER, about which I agree with Dominic that it’s a superb drawing package with a smallish but good set of its own inbuilt filters. As an art program, I think it beats almost everything else in the field as it is VERY easy to use and has a wealth of options and functions.
Whereas Jim is right about PHOTOPLUS, I’ve learned to avoid ‘free’ software from Serif after two very bad experiences: Once, I had to register over the ‘phone and just couldn’t get the code until I’d fought off over 10 minutes haranguing to buy the latest commercial version, and then again after registering something else online, I had a heck of a job to block out the flurry of sales emails and messages that followed.
Beside Artweaver, other free photoshop alternative is GimPhoto.
Actually GimPhoto is GIMP modification with new PS menu layout, packed with many great plugins, such as: separation, save for web, batch process, noise removal and photography filters, and also improved with new brushset, new gradientset, every aspect is tweaked to improve user usability.
http://www.gimphoto.com