42 of the Best Free Linux Graphics Software

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Linux is a very strong platform for budding artists, photographers, animators, and designers. With inexpensive hardware, free software, and a modicum of talent and inspiration, anyone can create professional-looking computer graphics.

There is a huge range of Open Source software available to create, modify and convert 2D and 3D computer graphics. To provide an insight into the software that is available, we have compiled a list of 42 high quality Linux graphics applications. The vast majority of the software featured here sports an attractive graphical front-end, although we have not neglected console based applications.

Now, let's explore the 42 graphics applications at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

3D Modeling and Rendering
Art of Illusion	3D-modeler, renderer and raytracer
Blender	Very fast and versatile 3D modeler/renderer
K-3D	3D modeling and animation system
Pixie	Photorealistic raytracing renderer for generating photorealistic images
POV-Ray	Full-featured ray tracer
Radiance	Suite of tools for performing lighting simulation
Sunflow	Rendering system for photo-realistic image synthesis
YafRay	Powerful raytracer
Raster Graphics Editor
CinePaint	Painting, manipulation and image processing
GIMP	GNU Image Manipulation Program
Gimpshop	Fork of GIMP mimicing Adobe Photoshop's interface
Krita	Edit and paint images
Vector Graphics Editor
Inkscape	Vector-based drawing program
OpenOffice.org Draw	Produces simple diagrams, flowcharts and 3-D artwork
Xara Xtreme	Heavyweight vector graphics, illustration and DTP program
Animation
Pencil	Create traditional hand-drawn animation using bitmap and vector graphics
Ktoon	Produce professional cartoons
Synfig	Create and edit 2D animations and compositions
Drawing
ArgoUML	UML modelling tool
Dia	Diagram editor
Kivio	Flowcharting program for the KDE Office Suite
Skencil	Interactive vector drawing program
Photo Management
blueMarine	Digital photo manipulation software
F-Spot	Personal photo management application
Viewers
Cornice	Designed to be a free replacement of ACDSee
gThumb	Advanced image viewer and browser
Gwenview	Simple image viewer for KDE 4
Eye of Gnome	Fast and functional image viewer
Imgv	Powerful image viewer
Camera
Cheese	Take pictures and videos from your webcam
digiKam	Digital photo management application for KDE
gphoto2	Set of digital camera software applications
Rawstudio	Raw-image converter and manipulation
Scanning
Kooka	Scanner program for KDE
Tesseract	Optical Character Recognition Engine
XSane	Featureful graphical frontend for SANE
CAD
QCad	Professional CAD System
BRL-CAD	Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) solid modeling system
Fractals
Gnofract 4D	GNOME based fractal generator
XaoS	Real-time interactive fractal zoomer
Utilities
Agave	Colorscheme designer for the GNOME desktop
ImageMagick	Software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images