Macgasm

On a request from davebriggs over on twitter, I decided I’d do a quick list of “paint” replacements for OS X. We’ve talked about a couple on the podcast, but we’ve never really gotten around to posting about them here on the blog.My absolute favourite, non-photoshop, editor is pixelmator.  It helps that they have a hot chick on their front page, but all of that aside, it’s an excellent application to muck around with photos.  Now it’s not free, but for an application this close to a photoshop replacement, the 59 dollars is quite a steal.  Oh, and it’s blazingly fast, something that Photoshop can’t even come close to.

The second one, would be Seashore.  It’s really lightweight, and offers “gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing”.  It works really well, and it’s free.  So, this might be something you want to check out if you have a limited budget.

Another application that is getting a ton of attention, and has been featured over at arstechnica is Acorn. If you want a “paint” replacement, this is probably your best bet.  It has everything Seashore does, and a bit more.  Perhaps the neatest function of the application is that Acorn has “Easy image and canvas resizing, just by changing the size of your window“.  You can check out some quicktime videos on their page of this action in progress.  Pretty nifty.

Finally, no Image editing article can be complete without the mention of plasq’s Skitch. It seems to be the bloggers application of choice.  It lets you draw, capture, and share your stuff really easily from within the application.  No wonder bloggers love it.  It’s in public beta right now, and I have no idea how long that will last, so you might want to run over there and grab a coffee if you think it suits your needs.Hope this helps.

Related Posts

• Pixelmator? I barely know her!
• Photoshop: Importing multiple images into multiple layers
• Love starts with Evernote + Skitch!