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.
ART is a proprietary image file format used mostly by the America Online (AOL) service and client software.
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.
Microsoft PhotoDraw is a discontinued 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.
Eye of GNOME is the former default image viewer for the GNOME desktop environment, where it had also been known as Image Viewer. It has been superseded by Loupe in GNOME 45. There is also another official image viewer for GNOME called gThumb that has more advanced features like image organizing and image editing functions.
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.
XnView is an image organizer and general-purpose file manager used for viewing, converting, organizing and editing raster images, as well as general purpose file management. It comes with built-in hex inspection, batch renaming, image scanning and screen capture tools. It is licensed as freeware for private, educational and non-profit uses. For other uses, it is licensed as commercial software.
In computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers. It is a form of vector quantization compression.
PC Paintbrush was a graphics editing software created by the ZSoft Corporation in 1984 for computers running the MS-DOS operating system.
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.
PCPaint was one of the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint programs, released in 1984. It followed after Microsoft Doodle, released in 1983 with the Microsoft Mouse version 1 drivers for DOS, and around the same time as Digital Research’s Draw program. It was developed by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram. It was later developed into Pictor Paint.
GRaphic Animation System for Professionals (GRASP) was the first multimedia animation program for the IBM PC family of computers. It was also at one time the most widely used animation format.
Artweaver is a raster graphics editor for Windows developed by Boris Eyrich, mainly oriented to professional and amateur artists who are familiar with commercial programs like Adobe Photoshop and especially Corel Painter.
FastPictureViewer is a freemium image viewer for Windows XP and later. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed. As an app with a freemium license, a basic version is available cost-free for personal, non-profit or educational uses, while a commercial license is required for the professional version with additional features. The basic version starts as a full version trial.
GrafX2 is a bitmap graphics editor inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. It is free software and distributed under the GPL-2.0-only license.
PMView is a raster graphics image viewer, converter, and organizer with basic image editing capabilities. It was originally developed for OS/2 but is also available for Microsoft Windows.
mtPaint is a free and open-source raster graphics editor for creating icons, pixel art and for photo editing. It is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.
NeoPaint for Windows
NeoPaint for DOS
