CinePaint0.17

CinePaint is an open-source graphic editor specialized in processing and manipulating images with 32-, 16- and 8-bit color per channel.

User interface

The GUI is composed of multiple floating windows which can be moved to the preferred position on the screen. Plus, you can hide some of them if the layout looks too crowded.You get to play with panels that store the editing tools, brushes, color palette and gradient editor, as well as a preview window with its own editing and saving options. You are allowed to open different image editing windows but the tool doesn’t offer support for a multi-tabbed layout so the editing process may prove to be quite tricky.

Supported file formats

It works with several file formats, namely BMP, DPX, GBR, PSD, TGA, HDR, PNG, SGI, TIFF and JPEG. It is also able to handle image formats such as Kodak Cineon, SMPTE DPX, and ILM OpenEXR. The edited pictures can be exported to the same file formats as the input ones.

Editing capabilities

CinePaint gives you the option to edit photos using several handy tools designed to help you crop images, flip the layer or selection, embed user-defined text messages, pick colors from the image, fill in areas with a color or pattern, fill in with a color gradient, and draw sharp pencil strokes.Plus, you may paint fuzzy brush strokes, erase the selected area from the photo, apply an airbrush, clone image regions, apply blur or sharpen, use smudge effects, measure various angles, and alter the color of the editing tools.The tool lets you undo or redo your actions, cut, copy, paste or delete items, zoom in or out of the picture, resize the photos, check out a histogram, switch between 8-, 16- or 32-bit color per channel, as well as apply various effects for altering the colors (e.g. equalize, invert, posterize, color balance, brightness/contrast, desaturate, gamma, grayscale).Plus, you can work with multiple layers, merge visible layers, flatten the image, work with different filters (blur, edge detection, enhance, noise or render), choose between several brush types, and alter the opacity and spacing for each brush.

Bottom line

All in all, CinePaint integrates a handy suite of features for helping you manipulate photos but the GUI needs a facelift in order to make the editing process more intuitive and smoother.