Commons:Software - Wikimedia Commons

Commons:Software

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This is a selection of programs designed to aid in media (graphics and audio) manipulation, as recommended by the Wikigraphists and Graphics Labs. These programs are considered very useful tools for the tasks of cleaning up, editing and creation of images, illustrations, maps, photographs and animations and the recording, editing and conversion of audio files.

Experienced Wikigraphists, several of them having improved their skills on the Graphics Lab itself, will be able to offer advice and assistance in the use of these programs, although each program usually has its own dedicated forums and tutorials that can be found online. The search strings constructed from the name of the program, followed by 'forum' or 'tutorial', will usually achieve desirable results from your favourite search engine.

This page contains a list of recommended software for creating and editing media files and tutorials as well.

Creation on commons

Contents

[edit] Markers

Name and function Operating system Download
1 Inkscape (article), specialising in the creation of vector images (SVG) Linux ; Windows ; Mac OS X All
2 GIMP (article), similar to Photoshop. Used for the retouching of images, and creating of raster graphics (PNG, JPEG, GIF). Can also be used to create animations when the GIMP Animation Package (GAP) is installed. Linux; BSD ; Solaris ; Windows ; Mac OS X Windows, Linux/BSD/Solaris Mac OSX
OR Gimpshop (article), a version of GIMP, modified to be more familiar to users of Photoshop, and said to have a less steep learning curve. (PNG, JPEG, GIF) Windows ; Linux ; Mac OS X ; Solaris All
3 Image:Hugin logo small.png hugin (article), for the stitching of panorama images, correction of perspective and various other things. Windows; Linux ;BSD ; Mac OS X; Other Unix Systems All
4 Blender (article), for the creation and editing of 3D images. Windows; Linux x86/PPC ; Solaris ; Irix ; BSD ; Mac OS X All
Examples of images created with the above programs.

Inkscape (see more)

GIMP/GIMPShop

hugin

Blender
See also: Commons:Templates#Created with... templates for more

[edit] Tutorials for related topics

[edit] Useful software

[edit] General software

These software packages have been recommended by the Commons community for use in image manipulation:

[edit] Panorama stitching / keystone correction

[edit] JPEG

JPEG is a lossy image format, most image editing software can encode and decode it but it is also possible to perform certain transfomations on a JPEG losslessly.

  • Jpegcrop and jpegtran: jpegtran is a command line app that can perform a variety of lossless transformations on JPEG files. Jpegcrop is a command line tool with similar functionality, there is also a windows version available with GUI.
  • Cropbot allows one to crop JPEGs lossless, using jpegtran, so one does not need the software oneself.
  • jpegpixi is a CLI tool to interpolate pixels in the specified part of a JPEG image without affecting the rest of it, except for the blocks which contain that part. Also included is jpeghotp, which can find hot or dead pixels in otherwise black or white JPEG images and generate configuration for jpegpixi (that's useful if your camera has CCD defects). Source code and Debian packages are provided.
  • Freeware IrfanView for Windows (homepage) with the JPG_TRANSFORM plugin. For all lossless operations use menu options

[edit] GIF

GIF should only be used for animations here, the tool list keeps that in mind.

  • gifsicle: A command line tool for making, manipulating, and optimizing animated gifs.
  • UnFREEz OSS GUI-tool for making animated gifs.

[edit] PNG

PNG is a lossless format to be used for any kind of diagram or screenshot for which SVG is not convenient.

  • OptiPNG: a command line tool for optimising PNG images
  • AdvPNG: a command line tool for further recompression of PNG images. Should be used after OptiPNG.
  • The GIMP (Windows Installers): is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free software and high quality image editing tool.

[edit] SVG

SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, is an XML-based vector graphics format. It can be created and edited by hand as a text file, or edited through a specialized program. Bitmaps (raster graphics) can be converted to SVG (especially diagrams, maps and so on should be)

See Help:SVG#Software for a list.

[edit] Ogg Vorbis (audio)

Vorbis is a lossy audio codec (See Vorbis).

  • Audacity can export projects in Ogg Vorbis format.
  • Shtooka Recorder Shtooka Recorder is a program for windows which allows automated recording of the pronunciations of many words, expressions from a text list. (you can record 500 words in 20 minutes). It can save files in Wav/Ogg/FLAC format (including Vorbis Comment tag)
  • Mp3splt allows one to split Ogg Vorbis files without re-encoding.

Also see the players for Ogg Theora videos below — they can also play Vorbis audio.

[edit] Ogg Theora (video)

Theora is a lossy video codec (see en:Theora). (Note: most software mentioned below should also be able to play Ogg Vorbis audio)

  • ffmpeg2theora is a command line theora encoder available for most operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
  • Videolan Client is an open source multimedia player also being capable to transcode files but having the advantage of supporting both a GUI as well as the command line; available for most operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
  • MPlayer is also an open source multimedia player also being capable to transcode files but having the advantage of supporting both a GUI as well as the command line; available for most operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
  • illiminable DirectShow filter for theora for playing ogg vorbis and theora in Windows Media Player and Winamp.

[edit] Lists on other projects