Filed under: Software, Freeware, Open Source
Seashore, open source image editor

The Gimp isn't the only open source image editor in town. Seashore may be quite basic in its functionality, but it's pleasant to use and the source code is freely available. Seashore employs many of the tools you're familiar with, like the lasso, marquee tool, smudge, erase, position, paint and more. Plus, there are several brushes and textures to choose from. Export options include JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, TIFF and XCF (Gimp). Seashore also supports layers and alpha channel editing.
Seashore is free, universal and requires Mac OS 10.3 or later.
[Via FreeMacWare]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mitch said 9:39AM on 4-27-2006
Seashore _is_ the GIMP. With less functionality; with a cocoa front-end so you don't have to start X. I'd say something to that effect in the article.
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Rolphus said 9:44AM on 4-27-2006
I realise this may cause ridicule and scorn, but I'd really like to see Paint.net being ported across to other platforms, perhaps using Mono or similar. It's a great little image editor, very quick and easy to use, and surprisingly flexible. I realise it's not likely to happen, but hey, it's a good app.
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James D. said 10:53AM on 4-27-2006
Rolphus, I had that same thought. I discovered Seashore a few weeks back after pulling off the full switch to the Mac at home. I wanted something with the basic useability of Paint.NET, but without the clunkiness of X11 and Gimp or the price tag of the other solutions (given how infrequently I actually do any image editing).
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Juan de Dios Santander Vela said 11:17AM on 4-27-2006
You should be able to do something like that if Paint.NET code license allows you to do it with Dumbarton, so that you can use C# with Cocoa bindings:
Dumbarton bridge
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Zach Hale said 11:26AM on 4-27-2006
You know, why can't someone just add good crop functionality to one of these open source apps. All I want is a function that can crop to a certiain pixel size but neither Paint.net or this can do it. I am not sure about The Gimp.
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Sean Finn said 12:35PM on 4-27-2006
I'm shocked at the lack of basic image editing functionality that is in iPhoto or Preview. Or maybe I just can't find it. For example, Image Resize. It's a pretty basic function, reduce an image to 50% of it's dimensions, or whatever. To do that now I have to run Fireworks, which takes forever to load and is freaking expensive.
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Chewbaca said 12:55PM on 4-27-2006
Oooooh! You guys should try the image editing program I use. It's awesome! It can get a bit pricey, but hey, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette (did i spell that correctly?). It's called Adobe Photoshop. Go for the latest version, 9.0, but they call it CS 2. All the functions you asked from the previously mentioned programs in your comments. You'll totally dig it!
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Eric said 1:24PM on 4-27-2006
Why not Photoshop Elements? It probably came with the last scanner or camera you bought. Ask around. Someone probably has a CD laying around because they use full-version Photoshop.
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Wheels said 1:49PM on 4-27-2006
Hey Chewie, Photoslop sux! I echo Zach's comment - If Seashore had a decent crop function, it'd be in my daily rotation.
My fervent wish is that Serif would get off their lazy butts and port PagePlus PhotoPlus, et. al. to OS X; those apps are real Adobe killers!
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Milo said 2:40PM on 4-27-2006
Chocoflop does more than Seashore and is still free. I much prefer it over the latter. For some reason its not listed on any sites like macupate, i found it via a forum post, weird.
Anyways, heres a link:
http://www.chocoflop.com/
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Sir Not Appearing in this Blog said 3:01PM on 4-27-2006
#6: Photo resizing doesn't require Fireworks. Try Graphic Converter. It's shareware, but it's not crippleware, so it'll go on working. You can resize based on percentage, pixels or inches. Give it a shot.
http://www.lemkesoft.de
Not the owner, just a satisfied customer.
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Chewbaca said 6:33PM on 4-27-2006
Photoshop Sux!
Only if you don't know how to use it. I've used it for 10 years professionally. In advertising and design, it's one of the best programs out here. Fortunately for me my company pays for it.
If you need to crop an image, you can do it in Photoshop easily.
Trust Adobe. They're single-handedly making the world better.
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Jacques Lema said 12:48PM on 5-04-2006
lol, I think the point with these apps is indeed NOT to have to load photoshop just to crop an image. Any lightweight cocoa-native app like Seashore will load in 1 second on a cheap G4 while photoshop takes forever. PhotoShop is way way beyond any of those apps in terms of functionality but it does take ages to load.
@Milo
The reason I didn't post ChocoFlop on macupdate or any other website is because it's _alpha_ as in unstable, buggy, crash-prone. I really need to fix about a hundred bugs before I will call it alpha and dare to release it to the public.
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Wombat said 10:26AM on 7-12-2006
To do basic image resizing, cropping etc you can use
http://snipshot.com/
It's an online image editor.
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