[HN Gopher] Seashore: Easy to use Mac OS X image editing applica...
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       Seashore: Easy to use Mac OS X image editing application for the
       rest of us
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 92 points
       Date   : 2022-04-16 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | peterburkimsher wrote:
       | GraphicConverter is the traditional image editor for Mac (since
       | System 7, I believe).
       | 
       | It's got all the basic functionality like transparencies, and is
       | highly scriptable.
       | 
       | Although I never did get around to paying to remove the 30-second
       | startup delay, I am a happy user. Maybe I should pay for it now I
       | can afford it!
        
       | itslennysfault wrote:
       | Why?
       | 
       | This is not meant to be mean. I really want to know. Gimp is
       | honestly great. Coming from Photoshop the UI is a bit confusing
       | at times, but once you figure it out it's a great piece of
       | software.
       | 
       | To me, Seashore (I haven't downloaded it... just looked at docs)
       | is just Gimp with less features. Am I missing something?
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | GTK apps feel pretty clunky under macOS, with GIMP feeling
         | moreso than other GTK apps with its various oddball UI patterns
         | that don't even fit in with a GTK Linux desktop (like its layer
         | palette with what looks like a standard list view but behaves
         | nothing like a standard list view). It also doesn't handle
         | multiple monitors well (alerts popping up on a different screen
         | than the document window is on). In summary, it's pretty
         | unpolished option among image editors that run on macOS.
         | 
         | Also, GIMP isn't the most lightweight of software out there...
         | it can be overkill depending on needs.
        
       | mrtksn wrote:
       | I'm still missing MS Paint. MS Paint is unmatched on
       | intuitiveness and simplicity.
       | 
       | This App is nice but the moment I launched it, it started forcing
       | me make decisions: I had to decide how large the canvas should
       | be. I don't know? Let me see the default so I can decide if I
       | want it bigger or smaller.
       | 
       | When I move my cursor over the canvas, it indicates that I am
       | doing something wrong("forbidden" icon next to the cursor). Why
       | don't you first give me the tool that can do something on that
       | canvas so that I can get my feet wet?
       | 
       | I'm sure when I learn the app a bit I will see how simple and
       | powerful it is but with MS Paint everything makes sense
       | immediately, it's just the pinnacle of intuitive image editing.
       | 
       | I think macOS needs an image editor that aims for the simplicity
       | of MS Paint. The professional stuff is out there and it's really
       | good but we still don't have an app for stitching a few random
       | images together and put a text on top as easy as with MS Paint.
       | Preview can do it, Preview is actually very powerful and can do
       | amazing things with PDF and such but it's total pain in the ass
       | to use it to edit something.
        
         | gardaani wrote:
         | Have a look at https://jspaint.app/
         | 
         | They have a GitHub page, which says that an Electron app is on
         | its way.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | Ah the very old MS Paint :)
        
         | beamatronic wrote:
         | When I used Windows, The two indispensable apps that I used
         | every day were Notepad and Paint. Notepad was great if you
         | wanted to copy and paste some text and strip out all of the
         | formatting quickly. And MS paint was great for quickly
         | annotating a screenshot. Today I use Skitch and Sublime Text on
         | Mac to accomplish the same goals.
        
         | 1123581321 wrote:
         | Check out Paintbrush for Mac.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | I have it, unfortunately it's nowhere nearly as usable as MS
           | Paint. For example, you can't drag and drop an image into the
           | canvas.
        
             | Veen wrote:
             | Acorn, maybe? That's what I use for quick edits when I
             | can't be bothered with a more complicated image editor.
             | 
             | https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | I didn't know about Acorn, it looks pretty good. So far I
               | really like the UI. It's not like MS Paint but
               | lightweight Photoshop, which is also good for quick
               | editing.
               | 
               | Thanks! Though, it's bit on the pricey side of the scale
               | for an occasional usage.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | I have Photoshop because it comes along for the ride with
         | Lightroom but there are a fair number of times when I want
         | simple cropping or resizing and/or maybe one or two very basic
         | operations. For things like that, pulling out Photoshop feels
         | like pulling out a shotgun to swat a fly in that not only is it
         | massive overkill but it's not even a good tool for the job.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | I know right? For cropping/rotating I would often airdrop the
           | image to my iPhone, crop and rotate there and airdrop it back
           | to my mac. Sure, there's the Photos app that can do that just
           | like on iPhone but it complicates the library management with
           | importing and exporting.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | Tagbert wrote:
             | As saagarjha mentioned, you can use Preview for that. Just
             | open the image in Preview and you can crop, rotate and
             | adjust color of an image. You can also export to different
             | file format.
             | 
             | You can also rotate directly in the Finder. Right-click on
             | an image, chose Quick Actions and then choose Rotate Left.
        
               | reaperducer wrote:
               | _Just open the image in Preview and you can crop, rotate
               | and adjust color of an image_
               | 
               | If you only need to rotate, you can rotate any image or
               | video file right from the Finder by pressing Command-R.
               | No need to even open a program.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | I know I can use Preview but it's very annoying.
               | Everything is behind a menu and it is counterintuitive
               | and slow.
               | 
               | The Finder rotate does only 90 degrees and doesn't do
               | cropping.
        
               | Tagbert wrote:
               | I wouldn't use Preview as a primary editor but a lot of
               | edits are simple rotate from portrait to landscape, crop
               | out the boring parts, or adjust the exposure and Preview
               | is a quick way to do that for a few photos. If you need
               | to do more in depth changes or for more images, I would
               | use one of the photo editing apps. My own favorite is
               | Affinity Photo.
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | Does Preview fit the bill? You can crop, resize, rotate, and
           | add basic annotations to images with it.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | I don't think I realized you can crop with Preview. Yes,
             | that's pretty much what I was looking for. (I think the
             | issue is that it's basically hidden behind the selection
             | tool.)
        
               | kmlx wrote:
               | a lot of great functionality is built-in but also hidden
               | behind menus or have strange names on mac.
        
         | ajmurmann wrote:
         | Would you pay for an MS Paint equivalent on macOS? If so, how
         | much? How much oi it was annually?
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | 4.99$ or 9.99$ one time fee or 1.99$ a year feels about right
           | for me. I would prefer the one time fee because I don't
           | expect it getting regular updates(I'm fine with paying again
           | for large version updates. I'm already paying for iStat
           | Menus, Affinity Designer, BetterTouchTools and they all work
           | with this business model). It is a utility that I would use
           | every now and then, so subscription feels wrong.
        
           | beamatronic wrote:
           | If it is literally exactly the same thing, I would pay $50
           | one time for sure.
        
           | 1123581321 wrote:
           | There are a bunch of these already. They're either free or
           | $5-20 one time. Discovery/marketing will be your challenge
           | with this.
        
             | mrtksn wrote:
             | There are no alternatives that nailed it. I think if the OP
             | successfully crates something on par with MS Paint it can
             | spread by word of mouth because there's no good answer for
             | the question of "how do you put these two images next to
             | each other and add a text on top of it".
        
           | lostgame wrote:
           | Annually? Eww.
        
             | happymellon wrote:
             | I feel the same with Gitkraken. There has literally been
             | nothing added to it since the first release that I would
             | pay for, but as a subscription they _have_ to tweek it.
             | 
             | $20 one time is all I need. I think Jetbrains has the best
             | model for this.
        
           | einherjae wrote:
           | 5-10 USD one time sounds fair, annual sounds like a big nope.
        
         | throwmeariver1 wrote:
         | MS Paints was neither simple nor intuitive it was easy to use
         | and with the ease of use came a lot of bad habits and with the
         | habits bad jpgs, giant tifs with 256 colors and the list goes
         | on and on. MS Paint is and was a menace.
        
           | mrtksn wrote:
           | Okay, how do you put 3 images next to each other and add a
           | text on top of it on a Mac?
           | 
           | Let's say you are creating some variation of this meme:
           | https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/American-Chopper-Argument
        
             | beamatronic wrote:
             | I do this very frequently on Mac. Here's how I do it. I
             | paste all the images into Microsoft Word. You can paste
             | anything into Microsoft Word. Then I take a screenshot and
             | then I annotate it with Skitch.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | Well, I don't have MS Word, I don't use it enough to pay
               | for it. I also would like to do some small changes to the
               | images(maybe laser eyes? maybe draw some lines to
               | emphasise an emotion?).
               | 
               | I also recall Word being not very easy with alignments.
        
               | reaperducer wrote:
               | _Well, I don 't have MS Word, I don't use it enough to
               | pay for it._
               | 
               | So use Pages. It came with your Mac.
               | 
               |  _I also would like to do some small changes to the
               | images(maybe laser eyes? maybe draw some lines to
               | emphasise an emotion?)._
               | 
               | Preview. It also came with your Mac.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | I can do it on Preview if I try hard enough, the idea is
               | that it shouldn't be a hassle.
               | 
               | If you look at my original post, I say that Preview is
               | very powerful but hard to use.
        
               | beamatronic wrote:
               | You could also use LibreOffice or Google Docs. I just
               | meant that for my use-case (arranging images, plain text
               | log files, syntax-colored code, and tables together in
               | one place, quickly) prior to final annotation (big red
               | arrows connecting the dots)
        
             | WoodenChair wrote:
             | You can do all of that in Preview. Preview has built-in
             | editing tools including shapes, text, and more.
        
             | throwmeariver1 wrote:
             | How does solving a random task make the software good? As I
             | said it's easy to use but it's bad software. It's non
             | conformant to nearly all standards the encoders are decades
             | old... it's bad AND not maintained. Even Microsoft knows it
             | that's why it's EOL.
        
             | recuter wrote:
             | It is actually built into the OS: +shift+4.
        
       | submeta wrote:
       | I am using Acorn. Nice little app.
        
         | alwillis wrote:
         | +1 for Acorn.
        
         | morganvachon wrote:
         | Acorn is probably the closest we'll get to a native macOS app
         | that is analogous to Paint.NET from the Windows world, and it's
         | worth the money if one is a Paint.NET cult member. Pinta (open
         | source Paint.NET clone) is available for Macs but it's just as
         | buggy as it is on Linux.
        
           | chrisseaton wrote:
           | Huh they made Paint.NET closed source - what a strange
           | backwards step.
        
             | tomcam wrote:
             | Would you consider it strange if it were your project and
             | after years of life in open source and being used by
             | millions it didn't pay the bills?
        
               | chrisseaton wrote:
               | I think you're confused - it's free.
        
         | protomyth wrote:
         | It's low ceremony: load image, makes some changes, save, done.
         | Most other image editing apps take too long and almost force
         | you to save in their format. Acorn has its own format when you
         | are actually making a project of it.
        
       | torstenvl wrote:
       | I tried Seashore a few years ago but it was completely unstable.
       | The link says they've done a lot of bug fixes to make it work on
       | more recent macOS releases so I'm looking forward to checking it
       | out.
       | 
       | EDIT: Downloaded and tried it. Glad that the UI is simpler than
       | Gimp but it's actually _less_ obvious how to use it. Sad, because
       | I think there 's real promise here. Hopefully Glimpse comes to
       | macOS.
        
         | bj-rn wrote:
         | Didn't know Glimpse, looked it up and unfortunately the project
         | is "on hiatus": https://glimpse-editor.org/posts/a-project-on-
         | hiatus/
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | Wasn't the whole point of that fork just to change the
           | name/branding because some people thought the acronym "GIMP"
           | was offensive?
           | 
           | Not surprised that it's dead now.
        
         | skoskie wrote:
         | Same, but if I'm being honest, I won't check it out. There's so
         | much competition in this space that I don't need to.
         | 
         | I paid for Pixelmator Pro recently because I needed to do a
         | repetitive task. It comes with several useful Automator actions
         | that were exactly what I needed.
         | 
         | Plus it's new ML features are great. I used it to enlarge a jpg
         | 4x with no loss in resolution. It's not always perfect, but
         | it's pretty damn good.
         | 
         | I love FOSS and wish Seashore success, but past experience plus
         | healthy competition means I don't feel the need to.
        
       | thow_away_soon wrote:
       | I would like something like this for linux, any recommendations?
       | I usually run some Image Magick command or open Krita simple
       | editing, and it feels like overkill. I thought about configuring
       | imv[0] to have some common editing features, but didn't take the
       | time yet.
       | 
       | [0]: https://sr.ht/~exec64/imv/
        
         | goosedragons wrote:
         | Pinta or KolourPaint maybe?
        
       | phaunus wrote:
       | wow, nice work! i'm wondering nowadays what's a good resource to
       | start learning objective-c?
       | 
       | i kind of would prefer it instead of using swift if anybody can
       | point out curated resources, that would be wicked! i have an idea
       | to learn a bit of smalltalk to grasp the main concepts before.
        
       | ramosu wrote:
       | I'll stick with www.photopea.com
        
       | paudorcaoliver wrote:
        
         | paudorcaoliver wrote:
        
       | slaytorson wrote:
       | I still miss Adobe Fireworks. Easy and enough features to get the
       | job done quickly.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | Fireworks was awesome. When I need that kind of experience
         | these days, especially the smooth vector-pixel crossover
         | aspect, I use Real-DRAW PRO in Wine.
         | 
         | https://mediachance.com/realdraw/ ($25)
        
       | kristiandupont wrote:
       | I was somewhat of a power user of Photoshop which I pirated
       | throughout my youth. When I grew too old for that sort of thing,
       | it seems that my need for editing images just kind of
       | disappeared. I am not sure why, really.
       | 
       | Every now and then, I need to edit some image though. I tried
       | using Gimp a number of times but it always rubbed me the wrong
       | way. Paint.net was fine on Windows though it felt a bit limited
       | (at the time. I am sure it's great now). However, when I
       | discovered https://www.photopea.com/ I felt straight at home. It
       | runs in the browser and it's free. Amazing! I still don't use it
       | often but when I do, I love it.
        
         | Tagbert wrote:
         | I wanted to like Gimp but could never get over the UI. I found
         | Affinity Photo and that has been fantastic.
        
         | anonymousab wrote:
         | > I tried using Gimp a number of times but it always rubbed me
         | the wrong way
         | 
         | Same here. For a while, I thought it was just my over-
         | familiarity and reliance on Photoshop and mspaint. And to some
         | extent, it certainly was, and is.
         | 
         | But over time, I eventually tried out Affinity, Krita,
         | Pixelmator, photopea, and a few others. And they just worked;
         | the UI just felt "right". The icons, shortcuts and menu and
         | window layouts made sense and were intuitive even for the tools
         | I hadn't used before.
         | 
         | So I've wrapped back around to thinking, nah, maybe GIMP's UX
         | direction is just plain bad. Or bad for me, at least. It could
         | be the case of some things having become a de facto standard
         | that GIMP willfully eschews, but I have tried to go pure GIMP
         | for long stretches and always walk away with a unique sense of
         | pure frustration.
        
       | vladstudio wrote:
       | I sincerely recommended Pixelmator Pro to anyone for image
       | editing on Mac. if you are coming from Photoshop, some parts of
       | interface will make you puzzled, but if you free you're mind, got
       | will enjoy it greatly.
        
         | user3939382 wrote:
         | Unfortunately with Adobe I'm a victim of a self-imposed sunk
         | cost fallacy. Even though Adobe drains my bank account every
         | month for $20 I can't throw away 20 years of practice and
         | muscle memory on Illustrator and Photoshop.
        
           | Tagbert wrote:
           | If you are into the Photoshop experience, you might want to
           | look at Affinity Photo. It is modeled after photoshop and the
           | price is a very reasonable one time fee. You will have a
           | little bit of a learning curve as it is not identical to PS
           | but it is much closer than any other photo editor.
        
           | mabedan wrote:
           | Why through away? stop for 1 month, try out Pixelmator. If
           | you don't like it, go back. It's cheap.
        
         | salmo wrote:
         | I haven't enjoyed an image editor as much since Photoshop 5 in
         | the 90s. Both the old Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro have been
         | commercial software I really felt like I needed and want to
         | buy.
         | 
         | It feels modern and natural on macos. It's pretty
         | sophisticated, but the feature set I use is easily within reach
         | and it's intuitive to me. Modern Photoshop is an awkward
         | behemoth. The GIMP has always been functional but painful.
         | 
         | The newer stuff like workspaces for different types of editing
         | seemed odd, but I do flip between the illustration layout and
         | photo layout and enjoy that.
         | 
         | I like the price for the software. It feels very reasonable to
         | me and brings me back to the feeling of supporting developers'
         | work.
         | 
         | Adobe is so expensive and invasive. It just feels abusive. I
         | also pay for Omnigraffle, but it's high enough it feels like a
         | burden vs supporting developers.
         | 
         | I am not a professional and just use it occasionally for
         | design, documents, and personal photos. I thought I'd share
         | that, since it colors my view.
        
         | eric4smith wrote:
         | Yup. Pixelmator pro is my go-to image editor. Right after
         | Preview.
        
         | kemenaran wrote:
         | I was expecting someone to post a comment along the lines of
         | "Pixelmator is great for picture editing on macOS"; it is one
         | of the best Mac editors.
         | 
         | But I'm also delighted to see your username pop up :) I used
         | quite a few of your wallpapers back in 2002, when I was making
         | desktop customization packs for Windows XP, and I have fond
         | memories of them.
        
           | vladstudio wrote:
           | thank you very much :-) those were the times!
        
             | recuter wrote:
             | Goddamn what a small world, thanks for the memories Vlady.
             | I was just a wee lad when I found your stuff way back.
        
               | vladstudio wrote:
               | I'm still drawing and publishing :-) although not as
               | often, I must admit. Btw I do draw in Pixelmator Pro now,
               | it fits my drawing habits really well.
        
               | wildrhythms wrote:
               | Vlad your work circa ~2006 inspired me to go to design
               | school (which I failed out of and went into computer
               | science instead haha). So thank you :)
        
               | vault wrote:
               | I'm glad I've discovered you and your artwork thanks to
               | these comments :)
        
       | callmeal wrote:
       | Affinity Photo is another good option.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-16 23:01 UTC)