Complete Graphic Design Suite on Ubuntu 20.04 - Inkscape, GIMP, Krita, and More

With this arti­cle you can turn Ubuntu Focal Fossa into a full profes­si­o­nal grap­hic design system. This enables mass resize pictu­res by one click. You are given 2D and 3D grap­hic editing tools for both raster and vector types inclu­ding anima­tion suite and video produc­tion. For photo­graphy, I include here dark­room tools and camera manage­ment soft­ware. Last but not least, I also include a game engine which is able to produce cross plat­form video games. I listed them here alpha­be­ti­cally with neces­sary infor­ma­tion I think impor­tant placed under every name. All appli­ca­ti­ons below are free soft­ware. I hope this arti­cle will be useful for you. Happy desig­ning!

Cate­go­ries inclu­ded here:

1. 2D anima­tion.
2. 3D anima­tion.
3. 3D grap­hic mode­ler.
4. Color picker.
5. Dark­room tool. 
6. Desk­top publis­hing / page layout.
7. Digi­tal pain­ting. 
8. Game maker.
9. Image resi­zing.
10. Image rota­ting.
11. Photo & camera mana­ger.
12. Photo filters & effects.
13. Photo retou­ching.
14. Raster editor.
15. Scan­ning tool.
16. Scre­ens­hot editor.
17. User inter­face desig­ner.
18. Vector editor.
19. Video compo­si­ting.
20. Video editor.

 

Akira

• Descrip­tion: ui/ux desig­ner for GNU systems. You can create UI mockups with this. It is repla­ce­ment to Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD appli­ca­tion. Please note that Akira itself is still in alpha not ready for seri­ous use. See Akira website.
• Cate­gory: user inter­face desig­ner
• Install: snap install akira
• Note: insta­lla­tion requi­res snap instead of apt.

 

 

App Icon Preview

 

• Descrip­tion: an icon desig­ner that works well with Inks­cape. You just need to create a new app icon and edit the SVG with Inks­cape on the fly and finally watch the real­time chan­ges on this app. Your icon will be displayed and compa­red to other built-in icons. See the website.
• Cate­gory: user inter­face desig­ner
• Install: flat­pak install org.gnome.design.AppI­con­Pre­view
• Note: this requi­res flat­pak instead of apt.

 

Batch Image Resize

 

• Descrip­tion: mass resize & rotate pictu­res by one click on your file mana­ger. I use this for years as a desig­ner. Just right-click multi­ple pictu­res and select either convert or resize to do your job.
• Cate­gory: image resi­zing, image rota­ting
• Install: sudo apt-get install nauti­lus-image-converter
• Note: unfor­tu­na­tely, it cannot do mass conver­sion. If you want one, install Dolp­hin File Mana­ger and prac­tice the tuto­rial, and use Dolp­hin instead of Nauti­lus.

 

 

Blen­der 3D

 

• Descrip­tion: profes­si­o­nal world-class 3D soft­ware for mode­ling, anima­tion, video editing, and movie making. It has the biggest commu­nity of users (compa­red to tools here) and Holly­wood-grade movies crea­ted such as Tears of Steel. See last section for more. See Blen­der website.
• Cate­gory: 3d mode­ler
• Install: sudo apt-get install blen­der
• Note: –

 

 

Dark­ta­ble

• Descrip­tion: the best cross-plat­form full-featu­red photo­graphy work­flow & raw proces­sing tool. It is repla­ce­ment to Adobe Ligh­troom. See Dark­ta­ble website.
• Cate­gory: dark­room tool
• Install: sudo apt-get install dark­ta­ble
• Note: it has very good docu­men­ta­tion on the insta­lla­tion.

 

Digi­kam

 

• Descrip­tion: you can import photos from your Canon camera to Ubuntu compu­ter with this awesome full-featu­red soft­ware. See Digi­kam website.
• Cate­gory:  photo & camera mana­ger.
• Install: sudo apt-get install digi­kam
• Note: alter­na­ti­vely, fortu­na­tely porta­ble version (appi­mage) is avai­la­ble that works across Ubuntu and other distros effort­lessly.

 

 

Fire­fox’s Mobile Mode

• Descrip­tion: to switch view into mobile phone screen. There are screen size presets avai­la­ble: Galaxy, iPad, iPhone, and Kindle. Impor­tant for web desig­ner who want his product to be respon­sive. 
• Cate­gory: –
• Enable: Press Ctrl+S­hift+M.

 

 

Inks­cape

 

• Descrip­tion: the repla­ce­ment to Corel­DRAW or Adobe Illus­tra­tor in rgb colors­pace.
• Cate­gory: vector editor
• Install: sudo apt-get install inks­cape
• Note: fortu­na­tely, porta­ble version (appi­mage) is avai­la­ble.

 

 

GIMP

• Descrip­tion: the GNU’s Photos­hop. It can be exten­ded by GMIC.
• Cate­gory: raster editor
• Install: sudo apt-get install gimp
• Note: flat­pak and snap versi­ons also avai­la­ble.

 

 

GMIC

 

• Descrip­tion: an advan­ced image effects and filte­rings tool, can be inte­gra­ted to GIMP and Krita. Nothing like GMIC in propri­e­tary soft­ware world. See GMIC website.
• Cate­gory: image effects
• Install: sudo apt-get install gmic
• Note 1: sudo apt-get install gimp-gmic # for gimp inte­gra­tion
• Note 2: sudo apt-get install krita-gmic # for krita inte­gra­tion

 

Godot

 

• Descrip­tion: you can make cross-plat­form 2D and 3D video game by drag-and drop without coding. It repla­ces either Game Maker or 3D Game Studio or even Unity game making tools. It is comple­tely free for commer­cial use. See Godot website.
• Cate­gory: game engine
• Install: sudo apt-get install godot3
• Note: alter­na­ti­vely, there is porta­ble version (appi­mage) also avai­la­ble.

 

 

 

Kden­live

 

• Descrip­tion: edit your video with this. It is repla­ce­ment to Ulead Studio or Adobe Premi­ere. See Kden­live website.
• Cate­gory: video editor
• Install: sudo apt-get install kden­live
• Note: porta­ble version (appi­mage) also avai­la­ble, or alter­na­ti­vely as snap and flat­pak versi­ons if you wish.

 

 

Krita

 

• Descrip­tion: the best cross-plat­form full-featu­red digi­tal pain­ting soft­ware. It inclu­des anima­tion capa­bi­li­ties and can draw both vector and raster. David Revoy is the most famous artists who uses Krita today. See Krita website.
• Cate­gory:
• Install: sudo apt-get install krita
• Note: like Godot, it is also avai­la­ble as porta­ble appli­ca­tion works in Ubuntu and multi­ple distros flaw­lessly.

 

Natron

• Descrip­tion: video compo­si­ting like Adobe Afte­rEf­fects on GNU/Linux that works with Kden­live and other video editing tools avai­la­ble. See Natron website.
• Cate­gory: video compo­si­ting
• Install: snap install natron
• Note: alter­na­ti­vely, flat­pak version is avai­la­ble.

 

Rawt­he­ra­pee

• Descrip­tion: raw photo proces­sing, simi­lar to Dark­ta­ble above, and also a repla­ce­ment to Ligh­troom. See Rawt­he­ra­pee website.
• Cate­gory: dark­room tool
• Install: sudo apt-get install rawt­he­ra­pee
• Note: avai­la­ble via flat­pak too.

 

 

Shot­well

• Descrip­tion: crop tool and image viewer that is fast. Fortu­na­tely, it is a built-in appli­ca­tion. It is the tool I use every time writing arti­cle with a lot of scre­ens­hots at Ubun­tu­Buzz.
• Cate­gory: image viewer, crop tool
• Install: (preins­ta­lled)
• Note: to enable you crop­ping (Ctrl+O) every time opening an image, change your default image viewer into Shot­well instead.

 

Shut­ter

 

• Descrip­tion: the best full-featu­red scre­ens­hot tool. I use this almost for all scre­ens­hots on my arti­cles here and beyond. See Shut­ter website.
• Cate­gory: scre­ens­hot anno­ta­tion
• Install: sudo apt-get install shut­ter
• Note: not avai­la­ble at 20.04 so see Linu­xU­pri­sing PPA to install it.

 

Scri­bus 

 

• Descrip­tion: the best cross-plat­form desk­top publis­hing and page layout tool with inter­na­ti­o­na­li­za­tion supports. You can make posters, books, news­pa­per, It is used by Full Circle Maga­zine, Malaya­lam News­pa­per, and many others, and perso­nally I use it to create my publis­hing Root­magz.
• Cate­gory: desk­top publis­hing
• Install: sudo apt-get install scri­bus
• Note: alter­na­ti­vely, it is also avai­la­ble via flat­pak

 

 

Simple Scan

• Descrip­tion: to make your physi­cal pictu­res digi­tal so you can edit them with digi­tal tools like GIMP or Inks­cape. For exam­ple, to scan a car poster into a PNG picture to be traced manu­ally on Inks­cape.
• Cate­gory: scan­ning tool
• Install: (preins­ta­lled) 
• Note: –

 

Synfig Studio 

 

• Descrip­tion: make anima­tion like what you can do with Macro­me­dia Flash MX. See Synfig website.
• Cate­gory: 2d anima­tion
• Install: sudo apt-get install synfigs­tu­dio
• Note: porta­ble version (appi­mage) avai­la­ble, and alter­na­ti­vely flat­pak version also avai­la­ble.

 

 

See Also

• PIXLS.us – a photo­graphy commu­nity using free soft­ware only tools.
• Scri­bus forum – a page layout commu­nity. 
• Inks­cape forum – a vector editing commu­nity.
• GIMP forums – a photo editing commu­nity.
• GimpS­cape – an Inks­cape & GIMP desig­ner commu­nity from Indo­ne­sia.
• Nick Sapo­rito – an Inks­cape guru teaching at youtube.
• Irfan’s Anima­tion – a 2015 anima­tion video crea­ted by Irfan using Inks­cape, GIMP, Synfig, and Kden­live. 
• Blen­der Open Movies – Holly­wood-grade 3D movies crea­ted with Blen­der and Sintel is one of them.
• Unsplash.com – public domain photos safe & free to use for commer­cial.
• /usr/share/icons – system storage for all icons inclu­ding apps and buttons.

 

Hono­ra­ble Menti­ons

 

• SK1 – a vector editor and based on CMYK colors­pace instead of RGB. It is still young.
• Libre­Of­fice Writer – not a grap­hic tool, but is able to set out pages and print your design out. It is alter­na­tive to Scri­bus in page layout.
• Libre­Of­fice Calc – is able to produce charts which in turn can be placed into your poster or info­grap­hic designs.