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updated: Saturday, October 09, 2010

Quality graphics freeware - for those with or without a disability

by Robert Harvey Clay

Paint.net is free image and photo editing software for computers that run on Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful et simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe^® Photoshop^®, Corel^® Paint Shop Pro^®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

Windows 7 (recommended),
   or Windows XP SP3,
   or Windows Vista SP1 (SP2 and Platform Update recommended)

• 800MHz processor (dual-core recommended)
• 512MB of RAMs
• 1024 x 768 screen resolution
• 200+ MB hard drive space
• Optional: 64-bit mode requires a 64-bit CPU and a 64-bit edition of Windows

Paint.net is a wonderful program that is: award winning; available in nine languages; has an online help system and support forum; downloadable plug-ins; has free updates; layers; unlimited undo with a compete history; and much more. It's easy to use, yet powerful and versatile.

The GIMP  

CNET editors' review

The volunteer developers of The GIMP have been working hard to develop a polished, user-friendly, and freely distributed image editor. Although the separated palette windows may disturb those users who are used to more traditional layouts, your comfort level should grow exponentially as you discover how pain-free the program is.

One of the most powerful general-purpose image editors around, the upgrades make the GNU Image Manipulation Program eminently comparable to Photoshop. Older features include channels, layers and masks, filters and effects, tabbed palettes, editable text tools, perspective clone, improved printing, and color operations such as levels. New improvements include GEGL integration for 32-bit color support, dynamic brushes, and more options for the free select tool. It even has regex-based pattern matching for power users.

The application provides professional tools that can stand against the big boys without the hefty price tag. Extremely powerful and easy to work with, GIMP is ideal for both amateur and pro photographers, Web designers, or anyone who wants to create and edit professional-quality digital images on a budget.

The GIMP seems to be the most popular free, Open Source program on the Internet. There is an abundance of tutorials, tips, plug-ins, brushes, fonts, and just about anything useful for the program that you can imagine, giving Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro a real run for their money. The GIMP is free to download and  use, and makes one wonder why anyone would shell out hundreds of dollars for a commercial product that will accomplish the same objective.

The only complaint I have about The GIMP is every time you start the program the main Window will not start maximized, and the tool menu is covering the "file", "edit", "select", and "view" menus and all other "floating" menus never remember where they were placed when you exited he application. It's just a matter of repositioning the "tools" menu and maximizing the main Window, a minor criticism considering what the program is capable of. This will probably be fixed in the next versionI 

Gimp is available for Windows , Mac, or UNIX

Gimp paint studio Files to further enhance the paint functions - be sure to read the installation instructions. 

NOTE: All downloads from "sourceforge" are a little goofy, it took several tries to get the file downloaded without the download zipping along and completing in few seconds. This results in a corrupt file that will not install. But, keep trying the main direct download link, eventually it should download correctly.

FotoSketcher is a award-winning program that will convert digital photographs into a drawings, sketches, or paintings. The process will take a little time and patience because here is so many different combinations of settings and adjustments. There are large programs such as "Photoshop" that have add-on plug-ins that do essentially thesame thing, but this application doesn't cost hundreds of dollars, it's free!

Project Dogwaffle is  paint and animation program for PC.

Project Dogwaffle 1.2 is a subset of version 2.0, which was released in January 2004. 

However, this version 1.2 is a free version with no strings attached, with no time limits, it's not save disabled, really, just plain free paint software for starving artists of all ages. 

Is the free version any good?

Well, you be the judge of that. There are professional writers and illustrators who have been using the free version for years for their book illustrations. 

Proect Dogwaffle started 8 years ago and has been developed by an artist, for the artist in you!  If this tool can't do what you need as an artist, then we know we still have work left to do. Don't be shy, tell us what you need. Join the Dogwaffle forum at Yahoogroups.

You can do some great things with the Dogwaffle free version. Lots of special effects, technical adjustments, easy to see sliders, and keyboard shortcuts for many operations. If you want to use just the pointer for all operations they have made that easy to accomplish. And there's no reason to panic when you discover there is only have two undo's, you can adjust how much memory is used for undo's in the "preferences"  dialog.

I really like this versatile application, but I have three major complaints:

1. When you quit the program, it asks if you want to quit; but it doesn't offer to "save" your work. You must always remember to save before quitting. 
   
2. The "file", "view", "window", etc. menus aren't underlined so you can't access the menus with the keyboard. 
   
3. You can save and open only .targa and .btm files.

Fortunately, there is a curved-line tool that works with paint strokes, so it's possible to paint with a mouse. For a free program it's definitely worth a test run.

If you want to get serious about painting on your computer, you should give this application a try - if you like this free version of dogwaffle, you have several choices of upgrades ranging from $29.95 to $99. See the upgrades here:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/products/index.htm

Vector engineer offers all the features required to create accurate professional drawings, working drawings, designs, plans, layouts and diagrams in a quick and easy mouse driven windows environment. Its great for work, home, education and hobbies and bes of all - its available now at a special low price or try the free version, it's complete with no limitations, free cad software.

The free version is at the bottom of the page. Don't expect to draw sunsets and wild animals. This software is intended to be used for computer aied design. Using this program, it is easy to draw with a mouse.

Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modeling and rendering studio. Many of its capabilities rival those found in commercial programs. Highlights include subdivision surface based modeling tools, skeleton based animation, and a graphical language for designing procedural textures and materials..

The current version is 2.8.1, released Jan. 3, 2010. This version is both stable and powerful enough to be used for serious, high end animation work.

• Mac OS X
• Window
• Linux
• Unix/Other
  

NOTE: All downloads from "sourceforge" are a little goofy, it took several tries to get the file downloaded without the download zipping along and completing in few seconds. This results in a corrupt file that will not install. But, keep trying the main direct download link, eventually it should download correctly.

About as easy to learn as 3D modeling gets, but don't expect to learn how to use it overnight. Be sure to visit the gallery while on the site. If you don't have java 5 or later, the installer will take you where you can download it for free.

Pixia is a painting tool made exclusively for full color graphics.
 * Maximum graphic size: 10240 x 10240 dots (Note: this depends on RAM capacity.)
* Number of Layers: As many as memory lasts.
* Peripheral devices applicable: TWAIN32 devices. Printers made to use for Microsoft Windows. Drawing tablets (Wacom, Oce-Japan).

Pixia Help File is available as a separate installation file. To get better tips for using Pixia, visit users' tutorials linked from the Tutorial page.

Pixia version 4 does not support Windows 95 / 98 / NT 4.0 / Me. Use it on Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / 7. For people who have problems using version 4, the Download page still supplies some older versions.

Pixia has been around for many years, and has been the choice of a number of professionals. 

With Photo! Editor, you can remove red eye instantly, enhance the color of the image, make funny caricatures, add astonishing lighting effects, straighten, resample and crop images. The Denoise tool is one of the world's best to effectively remove luminance and color noise from digital images made under poor lighting conditions. You will also appreciate the Make Up tool that offers a complete set of retouching filters to make the best of your portrait photos.

This is by far the most simple, straightforward photo editing program I have ever seen. If all you want to do is click a few buttons and improve the quality of your photographs, this may be the application for you. The deblur tool is actually a sharpening tool.

HeliosPaint is a feature-rich, easy-to-use and powerful paint program for editing photos, drawings and icons. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux and Unix.

This is a deceptively simple paint program, that needs no installation, and can be run from a USB stick. Just double click the HeliosPaint.exe file from anywhere on your computer, and up pops a user interface that looks way to simple to accomplish much of the advanced operations it's capable of. The features are too numerous to list here. Visit the website to find out what it can do.

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. 

Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, and direct XML editing. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and oths and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

Inkscape's main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development process, and by making sure Incape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.

For Windows or Mac

This program is an excellent, multifaceted drawing tool for the seriously devoted artist or illustrator. It has many extraordinary blurs, special effects, and extras which can be used to produce unparalleled works of art. It is a large program (over 150 megabytes) and takes awhile to install (be patient it will completely install).

NOTE: All downloads from "sourceforge" are a little goofy, it took several tries to get the file downloaded without the download zipping along and completing in few seconds. This results in a corrupt file that will not install. But, keep trying the main direct download link, eventually it should download correctly.

TwistedBrush Open Studio: TwistedBrush Open Studio has ost of the great features of TwistedBrush Pro Studio but just a handful of the very fine brushes included and without brush editing ability, all for FREE. Additional collections of brushes are available for purchase.

Twisted brush Open Studio is a fun and easy to use professional painting tool.But the number of brush strokes in the free version is only enough to entice you into buying the full version which is currently $99. Is it worth the cost? Download the trial version and give it a try.

Blender 3D software Reviewed by: CNET Staff on November 07, 2008

Ever thought about making professional-quality animations but decided not to because of the cost of the software, your excuse just got up and walked out the door. Blender is a free, open-source 3D rendering program that puts the power of theb medium back into the hands of the artist.

Blender features a laundry list of animation essentials that can be broken down intocategories Interface, Modeling, Rigging, Rendering, Animation, UV Unwrapping, Shading, Physics and Particles, Imaging and Compositing, and Real Time 3D/Game Creation. The interface, though loaded with complicated tools, is remarkable for neither obscuring nor interfering with the image being worked on. A brief sampling of tools and functions includes 3D paint for vertex weighing, polygon meshes, 2D and 3D procedural brushes, edge rendering, textures, collision simulation, and support for around two dozen 2D and 3D file formats. Extras can be added with Python scripting, and since it's open source, many scripts can be easily found for download in the user forums.

Blender is not for the faint of heart. Learning to use it is time-consuming and best done by following the detailed tutorials available on the Blender Web site. There is also an extensive online Blender community, making familiarization with the app less painful--if not pain-free. However, none of these detracts from the overall experience or usefulness of the program, and we strongly recommend it for advanced users.

This is heavy duty 3D software that has been used to create feature-length animations. Last count there is a whopping 28 tutorials. Great for still works of art too.

XnView
Reviewed by C/NET - This free program provides a number of helpful tools for working with digital photos. XnView's pane interface is a award-winning program that shouldn't disorient most users, as it uses a tree-like structure to let you view your shots and browse your music collection.

Our lone complaint on this front is that the more complex effects and filters aren't accessible via the main window and require you to double-click a shot before you can use them. Besides standard tools for rotating images and renaming files in bulk, this app also can convert pics among a wide variety of formats.

In addition, you'll find tools for capturing screenshots and creating basic slide shows, as well as a simple audio player. We were excited to see a utility for generating Web galleries, but we quickly despaired when we couldn't get it to work. Still, we recommend XnView to digital photographers who already have a first-class editing program.

Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7/NT/2000 SP 2  and
MacOS X, Linux x86, Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, Irix mips, HP-UX, AIX !

Available in a large number of languages. Also offered for pocket pc.

PicPick is user friendly and full of features for creating your image, suitable for software developers, graphic designers and home user.

It is an all-in-one program that provides full-featured screen capture tool, intuitive image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair and even whiteboard.

It has not only everything you need, but it loads fast, sits quietly in the system tray until needed.

This software is provided as freeware for only personal use. In this case, you are granted the right to use this program free of charge. Otherwise, you need to pay for a license for commercial use.

I like this all-in-one graphic capture/editor better than the one I paid for. Be sure to choose Program options>editor>show classic menu toolbar interface. It's much easier to use that way.

MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. 

Current version is capable of capturing the whole desktop, a highlighted window, an active menu, a control, or a fixed or free rectangular part of the screen. 

MWSnap handles 5 most popular graphics formats and contains several graphical tools: a zoom, a ruler, a color picker and a window spy. It can be also used as a fast picture viewer or converter.

MWSnap does not require installation and does not need any special dlls, drivers or system files which can mess up your system.

Artweaver - Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools. It is therefore suitable to leave your creativity run free. Artweaver offers you a clear program window, which can be used without training immediately.
(Available in Dutch or English. Very small lettering and no curved line tool, but will work with a drawing tablet input device. Has many advanced features.)

IrfanView graphic viewer

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7.

It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. 

This is one of the best, all-around graphic programs I know of! It has been around for many years, growing stronger every time it's upgraded. If you have a lot of pictures to keep in order you should give this program a try. NOTE: don't forget to download the plug-ins!

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