Inkscape -the powerful vector graphics editor

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Graphic editors generally belong to two categories- Vector editors and bitmap editors and their capabilities complement each other.
Vector editors are better for graphic design, page layout, typography, logos, sharp-edged artistic illustrations, technical illustrations, diagramming and flowcharting. Bitmap editors are more suitable for retouching, photo processing, photorealistic illustrations, collage, and hand drawn illustrations using a pen tablet.
GIMP and Photoshop are great bitmap editors while CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Xara Xtreme, Adobe Fireworks, Inkscape or SK1 are the main vector editors.
Inkscape is amazingly powerful and can be used to create realistic images like the car image shown here. The interface is really cute and you need not wander around in search of any tool or option.
Creating objects
Pencil tool, the pen tool, calligraphy tool, paint Bucket tool, rectangle tool, ellipse tool, polygon tool and text tool help to create common objects and specialized tools like Spiral tool and 3D Box tool also will be handy in certain situations.
Object manipulation
Every object in the drawing can be subjected to transformations like moving, rotating, scaling and skewing. Inkscape has a comprehensive tool set to deal with paths, as they are the most common constituents of a vector image. The Node tool allows to edit the path on the single node level by tweaking the position of nodes and control points of Bezier paths.
Inkscape's text editing is powerful with a text rendering based on the Pango library, which allows Inkscape to support several complex scripts including Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Tibetan, etc.
Unlike many other GTK+ applications, Inkscape uses its own renderer library to create graphics, called 'libnr' which can render images at up to 25600% zoom with anti-aliasing. Another advantage is the facility to save documents in PDF format.

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Picasa 3 -the complete picture management tool

Picasa 3 is a complete photo and picture management tool created by Google which will make your life easy through a variety of tools.
It will Organize, manage and even find misplaced photos in your collection.You can convert photos into movies, collages, slide shows and more.Combine your photos, videos, and music into a movie or use the editing room to trim your existing movies.Editing will be made easy as you can eliminate scratches & blemishes, fix red-eye, crop etc.
Sharing your photos and web uploading is made very easy and you can upload seamlessly to Picasa Web Albums. By enabling 'Sync to Web,' edits made to your photos in Picasa 3 are automatically transferred to your corresponding online albums.Picasa 3 has got a powerful photo viewer which is fast and lightweight application for viewing images on your desktop or through Windows Explorer. It lets you to take a quick look at images without having to fully open the Picasa 3 program.Picasa 3 allows you to easily personalize your photos using the Watermark and Text tools.


I has got a nice tool bar which will enable you to upload, email, Print, Export, Blog, and even Geo-tag your pictures.
To read more about Picasa 3 click here.

GIMP and GIMPshop

GIMP -GNU Image Manipulation Program-is a powerful free Image manipulating software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats.GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format.It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries.
GIMP's native XCF file format is not widely supported by other applications, but GIMP can read and write most Photoshop native PSD format files.
The Interface of GIMP is different from Adobe Photoshop but it is not very hard to learn it if you take some genuine effort.
GIMPshop is a modification of GIMP,intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop.Due to the GIMP interface changes found in GIMPshop, many tutorials for the popular Photoshop can, without modification, be followed in GIMPshop, and others may be adapted for GIMPshop users with minimal effort.
Download GIMPshop

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Faststone Capture

Faststone capture is a cute screen capture utility which can do all your screen capture needs in a beautiful and easy to use interface.It can capture the entire desktop, individual windows or objects as scrolling areas offscreen . It can capture specific regions within a screen in a rectangular, circular, and freehand selections. It also contains a practical editor that can process captured images with features such as resizing, cropping, contrast, sharpen, and text annotation.
The program has a very nice look and feel; it can be accessed through a small floating control panel or minimized in the windows tray area
Images can be saved in a wide variety of outputs (BMP, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and TGA).you can specify where the captured image will be sent (editor, clipboard, or file).
It is powerful, well designed, and uses a very small amount of memory.Currently the software is a shareware but the previous version (5.3) is fully functional and can be downloaded here.

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FastStone Photo Resizer

FastStone Photo Resizer is the fastest and lightest image resizer which is much more than just a resizer.View larger screen shot. It allows you to Convert, Rename, Crop, Rotate, Change color depth, Add text, add Watermark and give different Borders to an image. You need not have to convert your pictures one by one as this software supports batch conversion at a lightning speed. It supports most of the formats like BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and PNG. Drag and drop support makes it easy to work with. The border option is really cool. You can change the colour depth from 2 to 16.7 million using faststone. Adding text to your images can be done with elegance and could be useful many a times.
A portable version of the software is also available which you can download here.
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