…called Iris

This time its a commercial editor (one-window-app) by nolobe.com

Price is 79 USD.

The question is: Can it compete with The Gimp ?

Links:

• Iris by Nolobe.com

While mentioning Seashore and Livequartz i realized i have never written about GIMP, “the mother of open-source image editors”.

One major downside of Gimp on Mac OS X is:

the Running GIMP on Mac OS X requires Apple’s X11 environment. It is included on the “Optional Installs” package on the OS X install disk.

From my point of view no real problem as i do have X11 anyways.

I do know Gimp since my Linux days and it was always a great image-editor, if you arent pre-doomed by some of those big major image-editing apps like Adobe Photoshop or similar.

It might feel like a slow-starting app while the initial launch, but the second start was quite fast on my Mac Pro compared to the first one.

Links:

• Gimp for Macintosh

….called LiveQuartz. I just installed and and did a quick look into it….first impression is great. I guess it could be enough for many home-users.

About the application:

LiveQuartz is a simple and powerful free photo editor for Leopard. It is based on non-destructive layers and filters. The layers are at the left and the filters are at the right of the window.

LiveQuartz is offered by rhapsoft

Links:

• LiveQuartz Homepage
• LiveQuartz Screenshots
• LiveQuartz Videos

Another Free Image Editor for Mac Os X called Seashore

Quote:

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format.

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. Seashore was created by Mark Pazolli who, together with a handful of other developers and helpful users, still develops it to this day.

Links:

• Seashore Homepage
• Seashore Download
• GIMP Homepage
• Wikipedia about GIMP

If you ever have problems with your printer (driver or similar) you should consider to check out the Gutenprint Project

What is Gutenprint (quoted from the project page):

Gutenprint, formerly named Gimp-Print, is a suite of printer drivers that may be used with most common UNIX and Linux print spooling systems, including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others. These drivers provide high quality printing for UNIX (including Macintosh OS X 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4) and Linux systems that in many cases equal or exceed proprietary vendor-supplied drivers in quality and functionality, and can be used for demanding printing tasks requiring flexibility and high quality. This software package includes an enhanced Print plugin for the GIMP that replaces the plugin packaged with the GIMP, and Ghostscript and CUPS drivers, as well as Foomatic data supporting the Ghostscript driver.

Gutenprint has been renamed in order to clearly distinguish it from the GIMP. While this package started out as the original Print plugin for the GIMP, it has expanded into a collection of general purpose printer drivers, and the new, enhanced Print plugin for the GIMP is now only a small part of the package. Furthermore, the name Gutenprint recognizes Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the movable type printing press. Finally, the word guten is the German word for good.

Gutenprint 5.0 incorporates extensive feedback from the beta and release candidate programs. It has been completely revised since the very popular Gimp-Print 4.2 series, and you should read this manual carefully.

Gutenprint supports only the printer part of multi-function devices (devices that typically include scanning, copying, and fax capabilities).

We recommend that all users who wish to use this package for general purpose printing use either CUPS or, if they use another printing system or no spooler at all, use Foomatic with the Ghostscript driver (both described below), rather than integrating the Ghostscript driver with self-made scripts or even manually typing in Ghostscript command lines. It is much simpler to manage with CUPS or Foomatic and its PPDs. CUPS provides an excellent web-based interface for easy printer administration, and all CUPS-enabled applications (OpenOffice.org, all KDE apps, etc.) and printing dialogs (kprinter, xpp, etc.) show all the options in easy to use GUIs. Please visit http://www.cups.org/ for information on downloading and installing CUPS.

Gutenprint currently supports over 700 printer models.