Portable Network Graphics is a raster-graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)—unofficially, the initials PNG stood for the recursive acronym "PNG's not GIF".
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing. Owing to its fame, the program's name has become genericised as a verb although Adobe disapproves of such use.
A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
Preview is the built-in image viewer and PDF viewer of the macOS operating system. In addition to viewing and printing digital images and Portable Document Format (PDF) files, it can also edit these media types. It employs the Aqua graphical user interface, the Quartz graphics layer, and the ImageIO and Core Image frameworks.
Microsoft Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. The program can be in color mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no grayscale mode. For its simplicity and wide availability, it rapidly became one of the most used Windows applications, introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time.
Adobe Fireworks was a bitmap and vector graphics editor, which Adobe acquired in 2005. Fireworks was made for web designers for rapidly creating website prototypes and application interfaces. Its features included slices, which are segments of an image that are converted to HTML elements, and the ability to add hotspots, which are segments of an image that are converted to hyperlinks. It was designed to integrate with other Adobe products such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash. It was available as either a standalone product or bundled with Adobe Creative Suite. Older versions were bundled with Macromedia Studio. Adobe discontinued Fireworks in 2013, citing the increasing overlap in functionality with its other products such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Edge.
IrfanView is an image viewer, editor, organiser and converter program for Microsoft Windows. It can also play video and audio files, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires paid registration. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats. It was first released in 1996.
Corel Photo-Paint is a raster graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel since 1992. Corel markets the software for Windows and Mac OS operating systems, previously having marketed versions for Linux. Its primary market competitor is Adobe Photoshop.
Microsoft PhotoDraw was a vector graphics and raster image editing software developed by Microsoft. It was released in 1999 as part of the Microsoft Office 2000 family of products and was specifically designed for creating and editing graphics, illustrations, and photo compositions.
A number of vector graphics editors exist for various platforms. Potential users of these editors will make a comparison of vector graphics editors based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the software license, the feature set, the merits of the user interface (UI) and the focus of the program. Some programs are more suitable for artistic work while others are better for technical drawings. Another important factor is the application's support of various vector and bitmap image formats for import and export.
Raster graphics editors can be compared by many variables, including availability.
An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be compressed or uncompressed. If the data is compressed, it may be done so using lossy compression or lossless compression. For graphic design applications, vector formats are often used. Some image file formats support transparency.
Brush Strokes Image Editor 1.01 is a bitmap graphics editor made by Paul Bird for Microsoft Windows. It is released as freeware.
Seashore is a free and open-source image editor for macOS, similar to Photoshop/GIMP, with a simpler Cocoa user interface. Seashore uses GIMP's native file format, XCF, and has support for a handful of other graphics file formats, including full support for TIFF, PNG, JPEG, JPEG2000, and HEIC and read-only support for BMP, PDF, SVG and GIF. Seashore offers fewer features than Photoshop/GIMP, but is intended to be easy-to-use and to run natively on macOS. It includes layers, alpha channel support, gradients and transparency effects, anti-aliased brushes, tablet support and plug-in filters.
Helicon Filter, also referred to as Helicon, Filter, or as HF, was a proprietary commercial and shareware photo editing software program for Microsoft Windows, similar to such programs as Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, developed and published by Helicon Soft Ltd. Unlike these other programs, Helicon Filter is designed primarily to edit and improve existing photos and not for graphics creation. Helicon Filter's interface also differs from other programs in that compact toolbars and menus containing editing tools are replaced with labeled "filter" tabs, each tab containing labeled edit options specific to a single aspect of the picture. Although some editors used to Photoshop-style programs may initially find this layout unfamiliar and unlike the standard toolbar layout, beginners and those who don't recognize the standard icons generally find this very helpful for getting through the editing process.
Sumopaint, also written as Sumo Paint is a free painting and drawing web application similar to Adobe Photoshop.
Paintbrush is a raster graphics editor for Mac OS X. It aims to replace MacPaint, an image editor for the classic Mac OS last released in 1988. It also is an alternative to Microsoft Paint. It has basic raster image editing capabilities and a simple interface designed for ease of use. It exports as PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, and TIFF. The application also is often used for pixel art because of its grid option, and is not made for large scale images or GIMP or Photoshop-like editing on pictures or photographs.
LazPaint is a free and open-source cross-platform lightweight image editor with raster and vectorial layers created with Lazarus. The software aims at being simpler than GIMP, is an alternative to Paint.NET and is also similar to Paintbrush.
Artipic is a graphics editor developed for Microsoft Windows. An older version for macOS is still available but unsupported.
Photopea is a web-based photo and graphics editor. It is used for image editing, making illustrations, web design or converting between different image formats. Photopea is advertising-supported software. It is compatible with all modern web browsers, including Opera, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. The app is compatible with raster and vector graphics, such as Photoshop's PSD as well as JPEG, PNG, DNG, GIF, SVG, PDF and other image file formats. While browser-based, Photopea stores all files locally, and does not upload any data to a server.
