Last Updated on October 11, 2018
This roundup is now stale. Please visit – 42 Best Free Linux Graphics Software
Linux is a very strong platform for budding artists, photographers, animators, and designers. With inexpensive hardware, free software, and a modicum of talent and inspiration, anyone can create professional-looking computer graphics.
There is a huge range of Open Source software available to create, modify and convert 2D and 3D computer graphics. To provide an insight into the software that is available, we have compiled a list of 42 high quality Linux graphics applications. The vast majority of the software featured here sport an attractive graphical front-end, although we have not neglected console based applications.
Now, let’s explore the 42 graphics applications at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
| Graphics Software | |
|---|---|
| Art of Illusion | 3D-modeler, renderer and raytracer |
| Blender | Very fast and versatile 3D modeler/renderer |
| K-3D | 3D modeling and animation system |
| Pixie | Photorealistic raytracing renderer for generating photorealistic images |
| POV-Ray | Full-featured ray tracer |
| Radiance | Suite of tools for performing lighting simulation |
| Sunflow | Rendering system for photo-realistic image synthesis |
| YafRay | Powerful raytracer |
| CinePaint | Painting, manipulation and image processing |
| GIMP | GNU Image Manipulation Program |
| Gimpshop | Fork of GIMP mimicing Adobe Photoshop's interface |
| Krita | Edit and paint images |
| Inkscape | Vector-based drawing program |
| OpenOffice.org Draw | Produces simple diagrams, flowcharts and 3-D artwork |
| Xara Xtreme | Heavyweight vector graphics, illustration and DTP program |
| Pencil | Create traditional hand-drawn animation using bitmap and vector graphics |
| Tupi | Produce professional cartoons |
| Synfig | Create and edit 2D animations and compositions |
| ArgoUML | UML modelling tool |
| Dia | Diagram editor |
| Kivio | Flowcharting program for the KDE Office Suite |
| Skencil | Interactive vector drawing program |
| blueMarine | Digital photo manipulation software |
| F-Spot | Personal photo management application |
| Cornice | Designed to be a free replacement of ACDSee |
| gThumb | Advanced image viewer and browser |
| Gwenview | Simple image viewer for KDE 4 |
| Eye of Gnome | Fast and functional image viewer |
| Imgv | Powerful image viewer |
| Cheese | Take pictures and videos from your webcam |
| digiKam | Digital photo management application for KDE |
| gphoto2 | Set of digital camera software applications |
| Rawstudio | Raw-image converter and manipulation |
| Kooka | Scanner program for KDE |
| Tesseract | Optical Character Recognition Engine |
| XSane | Featureful graphical frontend for SANE |
| QCad | Professional CAD System |
| BRL-CAD | Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system |
| Gnofract 4D | GNOME based fractal generator |
| XaoS | Real-time interactive fractal zoomer |
| Agave | Colorscheme designer for the GNOME desktop |
| ImageMagick | Software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. Spotted a useful open source Linux program not covered on our site? Please let us know by completing this form. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |