Dubbed by BBC as the lite Photoshop, Fotor is the best free photo editing software for mac! Ranking top in Mac Store in over 80 countries, Fotor is the only image editor you need on Mac! Make Photo Grids & Collages on Mac / Windows for Free CollageIt is an easy-to-use photo grid & collage maker for Mac OS X & Windows, which makes collage automatically. In a matter of seconds, this collage software can turn any ordinary photos into impressive collages.
This page lists free programs or tools which you can use to create graphic images, edit pictures, manipulate ormodify digital photographs (photos), create animations (animated graphics),create logos foryour website, and otherwise draw or paint an image. The tools often handle a variety of formats, such as GIF,JPEG (JPG), PNG, TIF, BMP, and others.
If you need something to stitch photographs together to create a particularly wide-angled panoramic photograph (or even tall photographs or360 degree shots), you might find one of the programs on theFree Photo / Image Stitching Software: Make a Panoramafrom Separate Pictures easier to use than manually piecing the photos together.
NOTE: If you are here looking for the 3D graphics software that was previously listed on this page, please note that theyhave been moved to their own page, theFree 3D Graphics Software:Create 3D Content for Games, Videos, Film and Animation page.
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Free Drawing and Painting Programs, Image Manipulation and Photo Editing Software
Krita is a digital sketching and painting software for a number of systems. It has a wide variety of brushesincluding pixel, smudge, duplicate, filter, hairy, hatching, texture, chalk, colour ('color' inUS English)smudge, curve, deform, dyna, experiment (Alchemy), grid, particle, sketch and spray. Other features includethe ability to rotate or mirror your canvas; vector tools like normal text, artistic text, calligraphy, selection, path,fill and gradient; raster tools like a number of shapes and lines (eg, ellipse, polygon, rectangle, star, etc), crop,move, perspective grid, the ability to select in different ways (eg, freehand, polygon, outline, etc) and act onthat selection (eg to fill it), zoom, pan, etc; layer management; filters (eg, colour adjustment, brightness, contrast,desaturate, raindrops, oil paint, pixelize, motion blur, sharpen, gaussian noise removel, etc — there are fartoo many to list here); support for different colour models (RGBA, Gray, CMYKA, Law, YCbCr, XYZ) and colour management; etc.It supports numerous file formats for import and export, such as PSD (ie Photoshop images), PNG, JPEG, JPEG-2000,Windows BMP, TIFF, PDF, PPM, PGM, PBM, EXR, OpenRaster document, etc. Supported platforms include Windows,Mac OS X and Linux.
This program, mtPaint, lets you create 'pixel art' and manipulate digital photographs. It presents you with a pixel grid ofyour picture, at varying zoom levels, so that you can accurately paint or edit it. It works with pressure sensitive graphics tablets,supports multiple layers (up to 100, at the time this was written), has numerous brush patterns, user-defined gradients, undo,multiple image clipboards, gamma correction, a variety of effects (eg, invert, greyscale, isometric transformations, edge detect,sharpen, 'unsharp' mask, soften, Gaussian blur, emboss, etc), crop, rescaling,screen capture, etc.The program works in Windows and Linux, and is open source, under the GNU General Public License.
Pencil is an open source (free) animation drawing software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. You can use it to draw picturesthat you can string together to form an animation or cartoon. This cartoon can be exported as a series of PNG images, in a Flash file format(which you can exhibit on your own website)or as a QuickTime movie (the QuickTime movie export only works in the Mac OS X version at the moment). Sound can also be added to cartoon.The program supports both bitmap and vector graphics.
This paint program lets you draw, paint, apply photographic effects, sharpen, soften, blur, brighten, darken, etc(too many to list). It handles JPG, BMP, GIF, WMF, ICO, DIB and PNG file formats. There are also additionalplugins and textures that you can download to add to the program's existing features.
This freeware paint program may be used to create and edit images on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix. It requiresyou to have the Java Runtime Environment installed. Features include a pencil for editing pixels, a variety of lines(curved, straight, freehand), a paint brush with resizable heads, a spray can with resizable nozzle and a global spray facility,shape tools (star, moon, heart, regular polygon, freehand), paint can with colour bleed sensitivity, text entry,HSB/RGB/contrast/gamma adjustment, image filters (invert, grey, black and white, colour, sharpen, blur, edge feathering,edge detection, oil painting effect, emboss), image colour and transparency adjustment, zoom in and out, selection andmoving tools (scissors, lasso, wand), undo and redo, printing with page auto-fit, etc.
This image editor lets you create and modify JPG, PNG, BMP and other types of raster images. It supports layers with effects,has many drawing tools that can do gamma-blending and color gradient interpolation, has sub-pixel accuracy,the usual assortment of tools (magic wand, transformation, brushes, rectangles, ellipses, polygons, etc) and filters(drop shadow, blur, bevel, colour corrections, etc), supports PhotoShop plugins as wellas customizations using JavaScript, etc.
Dia is a diagram creation program inspired by the commercial 'Visio'. A drawing program rather than a painting one, it has many facilities to help youdraw diagrams, including special objects for drawing entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, etc. It saves files toa custom XML format, but can also export to other formats like EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG. Other features include the ability to print multi-page diagrams.Dia works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Source code is also available.
IrfanView is primarily an image viewer that can double as a simple image editor that can perform tasks like resizing of images, converting imagesbetween formats, renaming of files, etc. It is able to perform batch conversion of images and pictures as well as batch renaming of files, whichis a handy feature when you have many files you need to process.
GIMP allows you to create and edit images and photos. It has the usual facilities found inmany commercial paint programs such as a variety of paint tools (Brush, Airbrush, Pencil, Clone, custom brushes and patterns, etc),full alpha channel support, layers and channels, transformation tools (rotate, scale, sheer, flip), multiple undo and redo, selection tools(rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, intelligent, bezier, polygonal), animation support (including MNG), numerous file formats (BMP, GIF,JPEG, MNG, PCX, PDF, PS, PSD, PNG, SVG,TIF, TGA, XPM, etc) including conversion between different file formats, and so on. Supported systemsinclude Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris. This is an open source program.
Tux Paint is a drawing software designed for young children. It has cute looking buttons, sound effects and a mascot that encourages childrenas they use the program. Supported systems include Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, iOS for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad,Android phones, Blackberry Playbook tablets, BeOS, OS/2, Sharp Zaurus PDAs, andNokia 770/N800/N900 internet tablets and smartphones.
Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation program that supports layers, unlimited undo and redo, special effects,drawing tools (tools for drawing shapes, splines, Bezier curves, etc), etc. It runs under Windows 7 or newer. It requiresthe Microsoft .NET Framework (hence its name).
Inkscape is a scalable vector graphics (SVG) editor. It is open source, and versions are available for Windows,Mac OS X and Linux.
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Even if you can't afford to purchase photo editing software, you can still find free software to create and edit images. Some are developed by individuals, and some are feature limited or an earlier version of a more advanced program. In some rare instances, there are no strings attached, but most often you will need to provide information to the company by registering, or endure ads or nag screens.
Though these are all stand-alone applications you also might want to take a look at the free mobile apps from Adobe. They include:
Also don't forget there are also mobile apps from SketchGuru, Skitch, and a number of other Android and iOS imaging apps such as Instagram which gives you the ability to play with images by applying a variety of preset effects and filters to your images.
Finding the Best Photo Editing App for You
The key decision behind using any imaging application lies with what the requirements are for the task at hand. You need to closely research the product and get really clear on both the product's strengths and its weaknesses. Also, take the time to look at the work others have created with the product. For example, if you are looking to create simple graphics or to touch up family photos, then an application without a serious number of filters and effects may just fit the bill. On the other hand, if you want to do compositing and add effects then a limited feature set may not be ideal for your needs.
Also, it is important that you check out whether the application has been updated recently. A lack of updates is the first clue that this software may just be on its last legs. Also just doing a simple Google or Bing search around the application will tell you volumes. For example, Picassa, one of the apps mentioned in this piece has been withdrawn. That's the bad news. The good news is its feature set has been folded into Google Photos which is free.
GIMP for Mac OS X
What We Like
- Interface familiar for Photoshop users.
- Fully featured, despite being free.
What We Don't Like
- Might not be updated frequently.
- Lacks adjustment layers.
GIMP is a popular open-source image editor originally developed for Unix/Linux. Often lauded as the 'free Photoshop,' it does have an interface and features similar to Photoshop.
Simple Photo Editor For Mac
Because it's volunteer-developed beta software, stability and frequency of updates could be an issue; however, many happy users report using GIMP for OS X without significant problems. GIMP is not compatible with Mac OS 9 and earlier.
Pinta
Pinta is a free pixel-based image editor for Mac OS X. One of the most interesting aspects of Pinta is that it is based on the Windows image editor Paint.NET.
Pinta offers the basic drawing tools that you'd expect from an image editor, as well as some more advanced features, such as layers and a range of image adjustment tools. These features mean that Pinta is also a viable tool for users looking for an application to allow them to edit and improve their digital photos.
Image Tricks
![Free Free](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126346703/434843110.jpg)
Image Tricks is a fun and easy to use free image editor for Mac OS X. It is an application that encourages experimentation and offers the ability for a wide range of effects to be combined and applied to pictures.
Image Tricks is an ideal application for less experienced users to achieve creative results, thanks to the range of filters and masks that are available. There is also a paid Pro version that offers more filters, though you can see the effects that they produce in the free version, without saving them.
GraphicConverter X
What We Like
- Works with a huge variety of formats.
- Cocooner function allows non-destructive editing, preserving original image.
What We Don't Like
- Can be difficult at first.
- Cluttered interface.
GraphicConverter is a multi-purpose graphics tool for converting, viewing, browsing, and editing hundreds of image types on the Macintosh platform. If there is a file format or image processing task that your existing software can't handle, chances are that GraphicConverter can do it if you're willing to tackle the learning curve.
Free Photo Editor For Mac
GraphicConverter is a worthwhile tool to have on hand but needs some serious work in the usability department. The application is not free, but you can use the shareware without time limitation if you don't need batch processing features.