If you want to do some painting or editing of images but don’t want to layout $699 for Photoshop take a look at these two products. SumoPaint looks like Photoshop with layers, filters, toolbox and various kinds of brushes. It certainly doesn’t have all the features but it has some crazy brush things that Photoshop doesn’t have including a symmetry toggle on and off feature that duplicates your lines symmetrically like a keleidoscope. You can turn off the fill on the brush tool, leaving just the outlines to create cool shapes that can twist and turn - onionskinning! Check it out at http://www.sumopaint.com. Never know how it’s going to evolve but it’s owners say they want to keep it FREE! wh0o-whoooooo.
Checkout the Sumo Paint Demo
Gimp is another free open source program which does Photoshop type actions. I tried it but didn’t like the interface so set it aside. BUT, friend Milton just sent a link to some cool updates – something to enlarge pictures without getting crazy pixelated, a plugin to remove grain when the lighting is too low to get a good pictures or really good sharpener for blurry images. It sounds likes it’s worth looking at!
Gimp OS X downloader is at http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Overview.html Note: the noise removal plugin is now http://gmic.sourceforge.net/gimp.shtml
