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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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I prefer:

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

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

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

It tries to do both.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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

[–] Crozekiel 7 points 1 month 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] 6 points 1 month ago (2 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] 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, text tool is just awful but I feel like I heard that they're working on an update quite some time ago ...

[–] Crozekiel 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago (2 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] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okular is pretty great, I can't find a package that does good annotation of PDFs built on GTK.

[–] Crozekiel 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I use Okular all the time. I am so dense I didn't even realize Krita and Okular were both developed by KDE...

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

No worries, it's pretty hard to keep track when their naming scheme is "it has a K in it"...

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

Except for the also outstanding KDE Connect which could just be called Konnect.

[–] Crozekiel 2 points 1 month ago

Ouf, :(

I did say I was dense... lol

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month 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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

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.

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

Aseprite

Software that should have been around for the Amiga

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

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pinta.

It's like a Linux version of Paint.net

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I don't think its 3D rotation capabilities are as good, though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Darktable for raw image processing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

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 :-( ).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 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).

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month 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] 4 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month 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] 2 points 1 month 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] 1 points 1 month 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.

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