What is Photoflare?
A Cross Platform image editor with quick easy to use features and a sprinkle of advanced functionality. photoflare.io
Downloads?
You can download an AppImage from our Github releases, install official .deb package since Ubuntu 19.04 or add our stable PPA to your sources.
Source?
This project is developed in C++. It makes use of Qt5 for the UI and graphicsmagick for some of the filters. All source code is available here:
Documentation
We have some basic documentation but this could definitely be improved as its currently a WIP. https://photoflare.io/documentation/
Advantage amongst all the other FOSS software already “on the market”?
Photoflare provides a quick/efficient way to do quick edits on photos. It caters to a unique audience of Photofiltre fans who switched to using Linux and like how the UI/UX flows. No other FOSS can appeal to this same audience and this is where Photoflare has an advantage.
What I understood from that is that the software aims the masses who don’t want to “waste” time learning more professional tools like the ones we’re used to.
Disclaimer: I’ve never heard of PhotoFlare before.
EDIT: I did a quick test on Photofiltre and it doesn’t seem to open raws, just jpegs, at least a NEF from the Play Raws
EDIT2: I downloaded Photoflare and it also doesn’t seem to support raw files.
INMHO, everyone deserves a tool that fits their abilities and goals, maybe people start editing jpegs on Photoflare and after some time realize that a lot of artifacts are starting to show up. Then people google it and hear for the first time about the raw format. In the end, maybe a small portion of them end up by using one of the tools we’re used to.
It doesn’t have to be a gateway tool. There are tons of people who just need to crop and maybe apply a filter or do some other light touch up. This would be perfect for that usecase.
The code is open and the author is interested in sharing with us. We should welcome them.
Just installed on Windows 10 and it looks already quite stable on this platform.
As anticipated so far, it has quite basic tools (e.g. no layers implemented so far)
Funnily enough, there is a very basic GUIs batch tool export. AFAIK, this same “advanced” feature is not available with Gimp right now (yep, I know you can install some external plugin, e.g Bimp, to get it)
Here are more information about this software:
p.s: IMHO, it is not fair to compare this software with gimp, krita etc.
For instance, currently, Krita has 4 full-time developers and it has been developed for more than 20 years now…
Just tried the appimage on ubuntu 18.04 64 bit mate and it works.
I think it could be a useful software for simple operation for many non tech people, unfortunatly i know a bit gimp so i don’t think it will be my software of choice.
Anyway some suggestions:
I haven’t found keyboard shortcuts for zoom 1:1 and zoom to fit image (what is autozoom btw? i have looked for something like ctrl-shift-j for gimp). Last but not least i see no preview in the file selector.
Its likely if Krita or GIMP is your favourite tool you will not be a fan of my project. Its quite the opposite of those tools. I don’t mind at all. Its expected my project won’t please everyone and that would not be my target audience anyway.
I have actually been looking at G’MIC recently. Some of our users want far more filters available than we currently have.
Just some background on this. I started a version with gtkmm in 2010 but after many struggles I switched to Qt in 2014/2015. So this version you see only exists since then. I work on the project part time at the moment because I’m working a full time job during the week.
