Hello…
Since I appreciate KolourPaint—which is no longer being updated but is only in maintenance mode—I created a simple drawing program similar to it with the tools I needed ( arrows, gradients, automatic image merging, direct drawing of squares and circles, colors replacement, better zoom and scaling quality ).
Later I added more features.
It isn’t a professional-grade program, some things were not implemented in the best possible way and when I feel like it , I’ll change the text area to make it look like the ones in the other programs .
Aniway, I believe it offers useful functions. Drawish on Github by nikkNizz
You do have a decent README.md file, and I can see that it is C++.
Could you please tell us whether this project has used any AI coding or if AI was used for debugging or documentation… that will not exclude you, we just think it should be disclosed.
It does look useful.
I have used draw.io , dia, and asymptote in the past. I might have a look.
How about converting all those png files to svg? Perhaps imagemagick can help with that? It’ll make github happy and you can resize and rotate them quite easily.
I think qt has some functions for dealing with svg and converting a canvas containing a svg file into a png.
Thank you for sharing this project and I applaud you for not using AI.
Git is designed with plain text in mind, not binaries.
There is an extension for git that allows git to correctly version control binaries, but both the client and server would need to have it installed.
Edit: oh, I was wrong. Git stores binaries as blobs. When a new version of a binary is introduced, it just makes a new blob and links the current revision to it.
Wow I never noticed that - it hasn’t been updated in 10 years!
Still works for me and runs fine…
By default if I double-click an image file in Nautilus - I’ve set it to use Shotwell by default - which is usually fine for crop, rotate, straighten… Sometimes colour balance / contrast…
But if I need to highlight something - or redact sensitive information - I use Kolourpaint… or add basic text…
Mostly screenshots - but occasionally phone camera images…
Ideally I’d like something like the app that comes with MacOS - it does ALL of the above… “Preview” it’s called… I can crop / rotate or whatever - but if I hit the “MarkUp” button on the tool bar - I can annotate / redact or add text…
I’d NEVER use GIMP for this task - it’s way overkill and I DETEST it’s hideous insistence on saving in XCF format - I just wanna open a JGP or a PNG make a few tiny edits and save it again, same filename and extension and type!
Just did a search (I’m now defaulting to DuckDuckGo after seeing a Cory Doctorow “rant” [very well worded rant!] about Evil Corp) for Linux App like Apple Preview App on MacOs and got some pretty ordinary hits so switch to EvilCorp search engine and EvilCorp AI suggested “okular” and/or gnome-sushi…
Tried the same in Brave search - and by the looks of it - it just outsourced itself (the whore) to Evil-Alphabet-Soup-Corp AI anyway - the same answer just about…
Tried again in DuckDuckGo - one result was an old Reddit post and one respondent suggested / mentioned “flameshot” so I installed it - and - I can run it - but it’s not an image editor - it’s a replacement for screenshot! No! I’m perfectly happy with the default screenshot tool in Gnome 4x on Ubuntu 24.04 - press Prt-Scrn and I can choose how to screen shot (selection, window et cetera)…
Just checked out that Drawish app - it’s an appImage and I can’t be arsed figuring out how to make / associate image files with an AppImage application… I’ll just keep on using either Shotwell by default, and Kolourpaint where appropriate, and if I wanna get “fancier” I can just open the image on one of my MacBooks and “edit Markup” in Preview…
As I wrote at the beginning, I am sharing this program because it has features I needed that are missing in Kp. You are happy with Shotwell and Kp, so you have no reason to switch.
Out of curiosity, I wanted to point out that I’ve added a menu option to install Drawish automatically with a single click (it creates the desktop file). If you move the AppImage, simply click that menu option again, and the new desktop file will replace the old one. Once that’s done—on GNOME 46, which I’m using—you can associate it by simply right-clicking an image and selecting Drawish with the ‘always use this program’ option.
You can avoid the appimage by compiling it from source. … there is a .tgz file and a .zip file.
You can make a static binary, and that will protect you against future library version changes.
Then you would have a forever version.
Yeah Nah… I don’t need it enough to go to that sort of effort…
Kolourpaint might not have been updated in 10 years - but it still works… so :
Shotwell to crop / rotate
KolourPaint to block out or redact or add basic text
MacOS Preview if KolourPaint/Shotwell not doing the job…
For really odd shaped “crop” of a bitmap, I use InkScape - I can create a polygon with lots of nodes in a shape that I want to use to crop something from a bitmap, then set a “Clip Map” then export to bitmap (e.g. PNG)… I find it easier to use than GIMP anyway… It’s ostensibly a vector editor (its default file format is SVG - which is essentially a text file not dissimilar to XML) - but has some nice tools for manipulating bitmaps…
I only use GIMP if I need to actually edit pixel by pixel (e.g. rubber stamp too)…
And if or when I need to get drastic with a resize image - I break out imagemagick - it’s fantastic! e.g. I want bitmap.png to be half the size? “mogrify -resize 50% bitmap.png”
BTW - I didn’t spend much time looking at Drawish at all - so I’m hardly likely to go to the effort of building from source…
