If you’re looking for a free photo editor to use on your Linux or Windows system then do check out PhotoFlare.
I hadn’t heard about PhotoFlare until very recently. But it only took one look at this image editor’s well-designed interface, ample feature set, and open-source friendly nature, to know that I had to try it out.
In this post i’ll tell you more about PhotoFlare, its features, and show you how to install it on Ubuntu (or download it for Windows).
PhotoFlare is a Free Photo Editor
PhotoFlare is free, open source image editor built using C++ and Qt. The project was initially conceived as being ‘PhotoFiltre‘ for Linux (a popular freeware image editor for Windows) but has since become it “own” thing.
In terms of “functionality” PhotoFlare sits above Microsoft Paint clones but below full-featured, resource-heavy image editing programmes like The GIMP.
That’s to say it lets you make basic edits, e.g., crop an image, add text, annotate, draw, change contrast, etc, easily without any sort of complexity. WYSIWYG.
PhotoFlare’s simple UI helps you make minor edits faster than in more powerful image editors
All tools and effects are all easy to find, use and/or apply. Features aren’t hidden in obscure dialogs or buried four menus deep. In fact, the simplicity of the UI helps you to make minor editors much faster than in other (more powerful) image editors.
What makes PhotoFlare particularly interesting to me (as a blogger) is that it lets you edit pictures in batches. This is great if I want to, say, resize a bunch of screenshots for a post, or apply the same photo filter to multiple photos to keep a consistent look in something i’m writing about.
A general overview of PhotoFlare features include:
- Colour adjustments (brightness, contrast, etc)
- Crop, Flip, Rotate transformations
- Resize & scale
- Text tool
- Shape tool
- Magic wand/selector
- Colour picker
- Photo filters
- Gradients
- Brushes
- Batch processing
If there is one thing I wish PhotoFlare had that it doesn’t it’d be layers. The much-missed Pinta (an open source image editor that was inspired by Windows app Paint.NET) supported layers and was (arguably) all the more useful for it.
The good news is that layer support in PhotoFlare is on the roadmap for its upcoming 2.0 release.
Download PhotoFlare
PhotoFlare is free open source software available for Windows and Linux. You can download PhotoFlarefor Windows from the project website, where information on various Linux builds (COPR for Fedora, etc) are also listed:
How to Install PhotoFlare on Ubuntu
You can install PhotoFlare on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or later, Linux Mint 19.x, or a derivative like Zorin OS using the application’s official personal package archive (PPA).
First add the PhotoFlare PPA to your system’s list of software sources:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:photoflare/photoflare-stable
Then, to install PhotoFlare on Ubuntu or Linux Mint, run this command:
sudo apt install photoflare
Once the installation is complete you can go ahead and open the PhotoFlare app using your preferred method, e.g., app launcher, app menu, dock, etc.
Paid plans are available for this app. Depending on the tier selected, these get you early access to development versions, support ticket priority, and the ability to make feature requests.