Michele Neylon :: Pensieri

Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts

Graphics Editor For OSX?

by 19 Comments

I’ve been playing with my new mac over the last day or so and I will be posting a few thoughts once I’ve had a chance to try out more of the functions. I’m still in the “what does that do?” and “how do I do that?” stage, so I’m not going to make any comments as yet.
One of the things that I am looking for is a reasonable graphics editor. I’ve no interest in forking out for PhotoShop as it would be overkill for my needs. I’ve heard The Gimp is available for OSX, but I hate it, so that’s not an option.
Ideally I’d be looking for something along the lines of Fireworks or PaintShop Pro. Commercial software would be fine, but I don’t want to spend more than $100.
Any sane recommendations welcome
(please don’t start telling me how wonderful the Gimp is. You’re just going to annoy me!)

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Comments

  1. Robert says

    Might want to check here:
    http://www.opensourcemac.org/
    There is an app listed there called seashore and you will probably hate me for this as it is based on the Gimp but you may still be interested as this is the blurb on the site:
    “However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products”

  3. michele says

    Aidan
    the kind of things I do:
    – take screenshots
    – resize images (including screenshots)
    – cropping
    – basic effects (like the fuzzy effect in this sites header)
    – optimising
    Michele

  4. Aidan Finn says

    You can take screenshots with skitch or with the Grab applications in Applications/Utilities.
    I think most of the other features you mention are in Seashore or iPhoto. Picturesque is mainly for adding effects to photos.

  5. Robert Synnott says

    You could also look into Darwine or Crossover Mac, both of which let you run SOME Windows applications on MacOS (one is commercial, one free). If you already have a copy of whatever app you like using and it’s supported, that might be a reasonable option.

  6. Robert Synnott says

    I just checked; Fireworks MX (though not MX 2004) apparently works on the latest version of Crossover Mac (the commercial one). You could download the free trial and give it a go.

  11. mj says

    You want GraphicConverter by Lemke Design. It’s inexpensive, has decent tools for optimising and handles nearly every image format known to man.
    Apple used to bundle it on their Pro line.

  15. Eoin says

    Well there is always VmWare Fusion, then you can always just throw on what ever windows software you like, so If you have photoshop for Windows, it will work seemlessly on your mac.

  16. Rory McCann says

    I agree with you about the Gimp. On OSX it’s rubbish. Firstly it’s not a native OSX application, you have to run it under X11. Firstly it looks different from other applications (It’s a different widget set). Lots of interapplication communication doesn’t work, such as copy and paste and command-tab to cycle between windows.
    Try it out and be disgusted.

  17. michele says

    @Eoin – Photoshop would be overkill, but if I _really_ needed it there is an OS X version
    @Rory – I’ve tried the Gimp on Linux and Windows and I don’t like it one bit. I know some people are very comfortable with it, but I’ve never been able to deal with it.

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