Commons:Software
From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
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.
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, JPG, 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, JPG, GIF) | Windows ; Linux ; Mac OS X ; Solaris | All |
| 3 |  |
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 |
 Inkscape (see more) |
 GIMP/GIMPShop |
 hugin |
 Blender |
- See also: Commons:Templates#Created with... templates for more
[edit] Tutorials for related topics
- Manipulating meta data of media files like EXIF tags.
- Commons:File types: File types allowed at Wikimedia Commons.
- Commons:Media help: Help for how to play and view media files.
- Converting video between different formats, especially into Ogg-Theora the single allowed video file type at Commons.
- Help:SVG, Transition to SVG.
- Help:Creating a DjVu file
- Commons:Tools： Additional Functionality Tools on Wikimedia Commons.
[edit] Useful software
[edit] General software
These software packages have been recommended by the Commons community for use in image manipulation:
- The GIMP, home page at www.gimp.org - High quality open source image editing suite, similar to Photoshop (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X). Windows version can be found at gimp-win.sourceforge.net. Opens and manipulates a lot of file formats including but not limited to JPG, PNG and animated GIF's.
- Paint.NET, home page at www.getpaint.net - free and open-source, with a good user interface. Supports .PNG, .GIF, .JPG, .BMP, .TIF, and .PSD (with plugin) as well as conversion between and manipulation of images in these formats.
- Inkscape, home page at www.inkscape.org - Vector graphics program, similar to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X)
- OpenOffice.org, handles all types of images (reading SVG only with SVG Import Filter) (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X)
- ImageMagick, home page at www.imagemagick.org - Image conversion, effects, viewing... Particularly good for scripted and "batch" manipulation. (free, Open source - for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS 9 or X, and others)
- IrfanView, home page at www.irfanview.com (Freeware - for Microsoft Windows. A multi-featured freeware tool, supports many image formats. Good at viewing/converting images.)
- XLS-Chart2JPG Save your Excel charts as JPG with a little macro.
- Zamzar, home page at zamzar.com - offers an online file conversion service for various formats, including ogg video and audio.
[edit] Panorama stitching / keystone correction
- Hugin is a cross-platform free/open-source panorama photo stitching program. It can also be used for keystone correction. Examples: Category:Created with Hugin.
- Autostitch is a windows stitching program which works fine with photos which were taken in regard of using them for stitching. Handling is very easy but there is no way of manual correction. Category:Created with Autostitch
- ShiftN Freeware for automatic keystone correction of photos by detecting converging lines. Examples: Category:Corrected with ShiftN.
[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.
- Freeware Irfanview with plugins. For all loseless operations use menu options
- 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.
[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 that is not available in SVG format.
- OptiPNG: a command line tool for optimising PNG images
- The GIMP (Windows Installers): is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. An open source 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 en: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)
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.
