Graphics software for Linux

[Melvang]

So, I am looking for some graphics software for Linux.  The primary use for this is going to be logos, and such.  Nothing of constant use, but want quality software.  Any suggestions?

[CSCoder4ever]

would blender work?

[SpAmRaY]

Gimp?

[Leslieann]

There are quite a few places where  Linux simply is not on par with Windows or Mac, this is one of them.
I would recommend looking into Gimp, Inkscape and Krita, but honestly, your best bet is probably going to be to use Wine and whatever product you like. Be sure to check the WineHQ database to make sure it will work though as many will not. Adobe stuff often will. Another tool to get Windows apps running is to use Playonlinux, which often makes it a bit easier, they too have a database of what works.

[davkol]

Inkscape for vector graphics. It's very good, but takes come getting used to, and if you make complex stuff, you will run into performance problems.
GIMP for bitmap editing. It's very different from Adobe apps, and requires a big investment in learning. Many features required in professional uses are missing; e.g., it's nearly unusable, if you need CMYK.
Krita for drawing. It's very competitive.
Blender for 3D graphics/animation. Again, very competitive, but takes some learning.

ImageMagick is excellent for batch bitmap post-processing.

On a different note, it's possible to create (vector) graphics in Metapost/Metafont and TeX. Extremely hardcore, but possible, potentially interesting and sometimes very elegant.

[OfTheWild]

i did linux and gimp for years but photoshop and illustrator and lightroom were the cause of me going back to windows.

[tp4tissue]

Hrrrmm.. is this a PC bound situation, where you need it to stay light weight on the hardware ?

Even then though.. nothing can challenge the adobe dominion in this space.. it's just so highly refined..

[bmmcwhirt]

Logos should always be designed as vectors as thats what vinyl cutters and other things expect. On top of that it allows you to resize your logo as you need with no quality loss. It's also industry standard for logos to be vectors.

Inkscape is the tool you will want for that. In my opinion it's far easier to use than Illustrator.

https://inkscape.org/

[xtrafrood]

I'm just getting into the subject myself but so far I've found that Inkscape and Krita work well for me. I rarely use more than one color though. I'm sure you already know that vector graphics are great for scaling to whatever size you need irl.

Anyway, if you are creating or editing large images and notice some lag maybe check Synaptic for the low latency kernel.

Some more information about the low latency kernel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

[Melvang]

Hrrrmm.. is this a PC bound situation, where you need it to stay light weight on the hardware ?

Even then though.. nothing can challenge the adobe dominion in this space.. it's just so highly refined..

Not a desktiop, this is on an older laptop that shipped with Win 8.  Currently running Linux Mint Cinnamon edition.

Logos should always be designed as vectors as thats what vinyl cutters and other things expect. On top of that it allows you to resize your logo as you need with no quality loss. It's also industry standard for logos to be vectors.

Inkscape is the tool you will want for that. In my opinion it's far easier to use than Illustrator.

https://inkscape.org/

I did settle on Inkscape. 

I'm just getting into the subject myself but so far I've found that Inkscape and Krita work well for me. I rarely use more than one color though. I'm sure you already know that vector graphics are great for scaling to whatever size you need irl.

Anyway, if you are creating or editing large images and notice some lag maybe check Synaptic for the low latency kernel.

Some more information about the low latency kernel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

Using Mint Cinnamon.

[xtrafrood]

Hrrrmm.. is this a PC bound situation, where you need it to stay light weight on the hardware ?

Even then though.. nothing can challenge the adobe dominion in this space.. it's just so highly refined..

Not a desktiop, this is on an older laptop that shipped with Win 8.  Currently running Linux Mint Cinnamon edition.

Logos should always be designed as vectors as thats what vinyl cutters and other things expect. On top of that it allows you to resize your logo as you need with no quality loss. It's also industry standard for logos to be vectors.

Inkscape is the tool you will want for that. In my opinion it's far easier to use than Illustrator.

https://inkscape.org/

I did settle on Inkscape. 

I'm just getting into the subject myself but so far I've found that Inkscape and Krita work well for me. I rarely use more than one color though. I'm sure you already know that vector graphics are great for scaling to whatever size you need irl.

Anyway, if you are creating or editing large images and notice some lag maybe check Synaptic for the low latency kernel.

Some more information about the low latency kernel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

Using Mint Cinnamon.

I am using Mint Cinnamon as well Rendering time in Blender on my Mint Cinnamon/Low Latency is about 20% faster then rendering time on my Win 10 Home partition.

[tp4tissue]

I am using Mint Cinnamon as well Rendering time in Blender on my Mint Cinnamon/Low Latency is about 20% faster then rendering time on my Win 10 Home partition.

Are you sure this isn't due to drive difference...   

or maybe one side of the disk is more fragmented..

[xtrafrood]

I sort of expected some flak about mentioning low latency kernels. Fact remains that Ubuntu Studio still comes bundled with it. However you want to process that information is up to you.

[tp4tissue]

I sort of expected some flak about mentioning low latency kernels. Fact remains that Ubuntu Studio still comes bundled with it. However you want to process that information is up to you.

20 % is pretty huge.

[xtrafrood]

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian so a lot of software from the Ubuntu repository works just as well with Linux Mint. I installed my kernel though Synaptic via Linux Mint just to be sure it would be compatible/install all dependencies. Blender could be optimized to work better with Linux? Why don't you PM me tp so we can keep this thread on topic.

[iLLucionist]

Been there, done that. I HATE gimp. I simply HATE the user interface, I can't work with it, don't graps its logic.

And inkscape was nice, but for more serious things (designing a webpage or trying to do some page-layouting) it always crashes for me. And on top of that, it always had this one feature missing that illustrator had.

So, unfortunately, I went back to illustrator and photoshop. Sorry OSS, you suck in this department.

[bmmcwhirt]

Been there, done that. I HATE gimp. I simply HATE the user interface, I can't work with it, don't graps its logic.

And inkscape was nice, but for more serious things (designing a webpage or trying to do some page-layouting) it always crashes for me. And on top of that, it always had this one feature missing that illustrator had.

So, unfortunately, I went back to illustrator and photoshop. Sorry OSS, you suck in this department.

I whole heartedly agree about GIMP. I tell people that GIMP is graphics software written by programers for programmers not artists. Early on I had similar issues with Inkscape but the crashing hasn't happened in several years for me. Also if you are already familiar with Illustrator and more to Inkscape I think it will feel odd as they do some things similar but they are very different and accomplishing the same thing takes two different courses. Neither one is bad in this case, except for the price of Illustrator of course.

I find it interesting you are doing web layout in vector. I have ideas running through my head now of using SVG (which is an xml format) with XSLT and JQuery to create all kinds dynamic interactive UI.

[tp4tissue]

I want to get a new gpu for solidwurks..  but the damn things are so xpensive..

[SpAmRaY]

I want to get a new gpu for solidwurks..  but the damn things are so xpensive..

K5200?

[tp4tissue]

I want to get a new gpu for solidwurks..  but the damn things are so xpensive..

K5200?

I've only got 1  kidney to sell, and it wouldn't be enuff..

[xtrafrood]

I want to get a new gpu for solidwurks..  but the damn things are so xpensive..

K5200?

I've only got 1  kidney to sell, and it wouldn't be enuff..

Cherry picked 8GB of VRAM coupled with ECC and 2304 Cuda Cores? Solar flares? Pshhh.. Simulation or animation lag? Pshhh.. Windows 10/Software errors? Well.. Although, there is a bit of lighting/sun where I live. A UPS coupled with ECC VRAM/RAM might not be such a bad idea for a person in my area.

[kato9000]

Vector: Inkscape, Vectr (beta), Figma (beta)
Pixel: Gimp, Darktable (Bridge)

[iLLucionist]

Been there, done that. I HATE gimp. I simply HATE the user interface, I can't work with it, don't graps its logic.

And inkscape was nice, but for more serious things (designing a webpage or trying to do some page-layouting) it always crashes for me. And on top of that, it always had this one feature missing that illustrator had.

So, unfortunately, I went back to illustrator and photoshop. Sorry OSS, you suck in this department.

I whole heartedly agree about GIMP. I tell people that GIMP is graphics software written by programers for programmers not artists. Early on I had similar issues with Inkscape but the crashing hasn't happened in several years for me. Also if you are already familiar with Illustrator and more to Inkscape I think it will feel odd as they do some things similar but they are very different and accomplishing the same thing takes two different courses. Neither one is bad in this case, except for the price of Illustrator of course.

I find it interesting you are doing web layout in vector. I have ideas running through my head now of using SVG (which is an xml format) with XSLT and JQuery to create all kinds dynamic interactive UI.

A lot of people are in favor of doing web design in pixel, because Photoshop has more special effects (embossing, shadow, textures, etc.). However, I find it much much easier to do layouting in Illustrator. It is SO much easier to do design in vector than it is in pixel, for me at least. Yes yes, there is these "vector shapes" in photoshop but plainly if you are used to the tools in illustrator, Photoshop's "vector mode" is no match.

Btw, interactive UI and SVG? I wouldn't dare try it, because all browsers render SVG differently, it is not so consistent across platforms as you want it to be. to top it off, on linux the rendering is not even done by the browser itself, but by compiz (if that is still what is being used). So vector in firefox on linux may even look different than on windows.

[bmmcwhirt]

Been there, done that. I HATE gimp. I simply HATE the user interface, I can't work with it, don't graps its logic.

And inkscape was nice, but for more serious things (designing a webpage or trying to do some page-layouting) it always crashes for me. And on top of that, it always had this one feature missing that illustrator had.

So, unfortunately, I went back to illustrator and photoshop. Sorry OSS, you suck in this department.

I whole heartedly agree about GIMP. I tell people that GIMP is graphics software written by programers for programmers not artists. Early on I had similar issues with Inkscape but the crashing hasn't happened in several years for me. Also if you are already familiar with Illustrator and more to Inkscape I think it will feel odd as they do some things similar but they are very different and accomplishing the same thing takes two different courses. Neither one is bad in this case, except for the price of Illustrator of course.

I find it interesting you are doing web layout in vector. I have ideas running through my head now of using SVG (which is an xml format) with XSLT and JQuery to create all kinds dynamic interactive UI.

A lot of people are in favor of doing web design in pixel, because Photoshop has more special effects (embossing, shadow, textures, etc.). However, I find it much much easier to do layouting in Illustrator. It is SO much easier to do design in vector than it is in pixel, for me at least. Yes yes, there is these "vector shapes" in photoshop but plainly if you are used to the tools in illustrator, Photoshop's "vector mode" is no match.

Btw, interactive UI and SVG? I wouldn't dare try it, because all browsers render SVG differently, it is not so consistent across platforms as you want it to be. to top it off, on linux the rendering is not even done by the browser itself, but by compiz (if that is still what is being used). So vector in firefox on linux may even look different than on windows.

I'm not talking about letting it render as SVG, I'm talking about using XSLT to transform the layouts.

[iLLucionist]

Been there, done that. I HATE gimp. I simply HATE the user interface, I can't work with it, don't graps its logic.

And inkscape was nice, but for more serious things (designing a webpage or trying to do some page-layouting) it always crashes for me. And on top of that, it always had this one feature missing that illustrator had.

So, unfortunately, I went back to illustrator and photoshop. Sorry OSS, you suck in this department.

I whole heartedly agree about GIMP. I tell people that GIMP is graphics software written by programers for programmers not artists. Early on I had similar issues with Inkscape but the crashing hasn't happened in several years for me. Also if you are already familiar with Illustrator and more to Inkscape I think it will feel odd as they do some things similar but they are very different and accomplishing the same thing takes two different courses. Neither one is bad in this case, except for the price of Illustrator of course.

I find it interesting you are doing web layout in vector. I have ideas running through my head now of using SVG (which is an xml format) with XSLT and JQuery to create all kinds dynamic interactive UI.

A lot of people are in favor of doing web design in pixel, because Photoshop has more special effects (embossing, shadow, textures, etc.). However, I find it much much easier to do layouting in Illustrator. It is SO much easier to do design in vector than it is in pixel, for me at least. Yes yes, there is these "vector shapes" in photoshop but plainly if you are used to the tools in illustrator, Photoshop's "vector mode" is no match.

Btw, interactive UI and SVG? I wouldn't dare try it, because all browsers render SVG differently, it is not so consistent across platforms as you want it to be. to top it off, on linux the rendering is not even done by the browser itself, but by compiz (if that is still what is being used). So vector in firefox on linux may even look different than on windows.

I'm not talking about letting it render as SVG, I'm talking about using XSLT to transform the layouts.

Ah ok, missed that.

Is XSLT still a thing?

[bmmcwhirt]

Yea XSLT allows your PHP db code to be much cleaner you don't have to do any formatting in the code.  I use it frequently.