Hello fediverse penguins!
Being in Linux for 2+ years, I have found alternative solutions for the apps I used on windows. But I can’t find something like Photoshop.
I started using Krita, which is amazing and does lots of things I do, but the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes. Then I found inkscape, which was good for, text and everything else worked fine, but not much of photo editor.
So what next? any recommendations ?
I also use kdenlive for video editing, and rawtherapee for DSLR photos editing.
As someone already pointed out, try to increase font size first.
I personally use a Vector layer and put text there (not sure if it even works in paint layer). For making it bigger you can then just grab the corner with Select Shapes Tool and resize it. If it doesn’t work, enable Scale Styles in the Tool Options docker.
Gimp and Darktable should do the trick !
Affinity
Someone just recently managed to get it going.
I have been looking at Affinity as a sub for InDesign. I have never actually tried it though. Does it work on Linux?
I dropped Adobe a few years ago, I do love inscape, however yeh it has limitations, gimp for photos. Not found anything to good with text. Been back and forward with Scribus but it’s just so awkward.
I used Affinity on Mac and Windows. It was the affordable, well-thought-out, performant Photoshop competitor and is now free to use (with a Canva account). Some folks got it running with wine and there is an easy to use appimage ( see articlke )/
I got it running easily, but didn’t test it fully, yet.
Yeh I don’t wanna be faffing with wine…that’s what held me back last time I looked. Didn’t even mind the one off fee for affinity I’d rather pay that and know it’s mine TBH. Curious if can a will eventually make it subscription.
Personally I use GIMP. Been my photoshop replacement for at least a good 5ish years now, and it’s come a long way! It has (imo) a pretty intuitive interface so it doesn’t take too long to acclimate.
try also https://www.affinity.studio/ by Canva, free and run on linux great
GIMP, but you definitely should install also the GMIC and resynthesiser plugins. With GMIC especially, you’re getting so many things that not even Photoshop can do, making GIMP objectively superior.
Have you tried PhotoGIMP? The link is in the sibling comments. I wonder if the difference, my first time hearing of GMIC.
Yeah, I’ve tried photogimp, but it just changes the layout to be more comfortable for Photoshop users, which I’m not. GMIC is a collection of different VFX.
What do personally use G’MIC for?
The example screenshots all look gimmicky (heh) or super advanced scientific image processing.
I guess noise reduction is useful to the average user. Depends on how good it is.
Two of my favourite ones are median and montage. One I use for mood boards, the other one is to get rid of either noise or people in images.
I can recommend PhotoGIMP which makes GIMP UI fairly close to Ps.
The first item on your list should have been to try Gimp ?
I’ll add that you can’t just “try” gimp really, you’ll have to learn some new workflows for sure, but yeah, should’ve been top of the list, it’s THE alternative.
Photo editing: darktable
Digital Art: Krita
Illustrator type stuff: InkscapePain: Gimp. although the PhotoGIMP plugin makes it bearable.
OR wait for the recent wine patch to mature a bit more and then you can literally just use Photoshop.
Krita is what I use but I also find text handling difficult so I always do text last.
Since no one else has said it… Pixelorama is somewhat focused on making pixel art and animations, but it’s great at what it does.
There are ways to bypass some of the issues. But for me, what works the best, is to get used to use the tool that fits the job best, and sometimes that’s two or three tools for the same project. It’s exactly if I do some woodwork (carpenter work), I might use both a saw, a hammer, a chisel, a drill and a screwdriver… It really doesn’t bother me, to use more apps to create something I’m satisfied with. :-)
Inkscape, Gimp, Krita is my most used apps on Linux… :-) On SloWindows it’s mostly Inkscape and Affinity…
I started using Krita, which is amazing and does lots of things I do, but the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes. Then I found inkscape, which was good for, text and everything else worked fine, but not much of photo editor.
Inkscape is like Adobe illustrator. It’s for vector graphics and text. it’s not great for photos/pictures/pixelated things. Like, you can add those as objects to a document. But you want to edit the images somewhere else. Maybe a krita --> inkscape workflow could work for you?
I also use kdenlive for video editing, and rawtherapee for DSLR photos editing.
If you’re also just kinda exploring software for fun, I recommend trying to play around with blender for more specialized video editing. Like, if you want to add complex effects, or motion track/stabilize, whatever. It’s an extremely powerful piece of software (best to look at tutorials, idk if anyone can figure that shit out on their own). All I’ve done with it is stabilize some video (which I then used in a kdenlive project), and I absolutely haven’t even scratched the surface.
Last time I did Krita ----> inkspace, not much hassle. I know Blender, I didn’t know that it could do video editing.
People sleep on Blender’s “VSE” capabilities so much. I feel like an extension to make it a little bit more turnkey like Kadenlive could be helpful, but it’s a VERY good video editor and I think few users really know how much it can do in that realm.
the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes.
I dunno what you’re doing but… When you resize text, you usually want to select the text and increase the font size. Sometimes you can render to vector and resize that. But if you resize the text as pixels, then it’ll probably look bad. Generally I try not to render text to pixels or do that last if necessary.
I just use gimp, but for the record, someone recently got modern Photoshop working in wine
