Graphics
Here are all the programs to create, edit and manage your graphics under Linux.
Image Manipulation Program
The Gimp is a very complex and mature tool that was first released in January of 1996. It is also the origin of GTK+ that is used by many programs. The Gimp has a lot of features to create, edit and convert images just like the commercial ones, such as Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. It has dozens of filters available as plugins and can talk directly to scanners.
Vector Drawing Program
Sodipodi's aim is to be the Gimp for vector drawing programs under Linux. Its native file format is SVG, the W3C-standard that may become a very important image-format for the WWW. You are able to draw several geometric objects and group them. Its user interface is very clear and the features are growing. Give it a try if you need scalable graphics and get rid of the Gimp that is not made for that purpose.
Image Viewer
If you have dozens of images, most times you cannot use your image manipulation program to view them due to its slowness and complexity. You may use Gqview that displays the content of a directory as thumnails on the left and the selected image on the right. You can do simple work (e.g. rotating), open the gimp for this purpose and do a slideshow in fullscreen. Moreover you can control Gqview with the keyboard and scan for duplicates.
3D-Renderer
Blender is a very amazing program: It is a very complex renderer with a size of only 4 MB. It has an OpenGL-user-interface and is availabile for Windows, Linux, Irix, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. You can use the basic version for free and a commercial one with more features. Nevertheless, the basic one has a great number of features (e.g. meshes, cubes etc.) enabling you to create a 3D-world or even your own movies. Check the gallery to see the amazing images and movies.
