Graphics

FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touch the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA.

An increasingly credible rival to MS Office, OpenOffice.org includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases, as well as HTML and XML documents. Not only does it let you edit basic documents, such as letters and faxes, it also handles complex and multipart documents with bibliographies, reference tables, and indexes.

The interface is similar to that of MS Office users, and even advanced Office users will find almost everything they're used to: templates, collaborative features (versions, recording changes), macros, and even a programming language. OpenOffice.org lets you open and save documents in formats as diverse as MS Office, PDF, HTML, and XML. However, it normally saves files in the open-standard Oasis OpenDocument XML format, for maximum compatibility with other applications. We were pleased to find that stability has improved too. No doubt about it, OpenOffice.org is a compelling option for anyone in search of an alternative office suite.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.

Blender is the open-source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. It is available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

XnView is a fast multi-format graphics browser, viewer, and converter. It can read more than 400 file formats, e.g. gif, bmp, jpeg, png, targa, multipage tiff, camera RAW, jpeg 2000, mpeg, Avi, Quicktime. EXIF & IPTC metadata are also supported. The image viewer has an Explorer-like browser that allows quick and simple browsing of directory contents. XnView supports red eye correction, crops and transforms JPG images losslessly, generates HTML pages and contact sheets, and provides batch conversion and batch renaming. Slide shows with transitions effects, screen capturing, WIA & TWAIN support (scanner & digital cameras), image comparison, file operations.

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, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others 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 Inkcape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.

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 five 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.