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I need to add shapes that have been available in Paint Shop Pro since version 7 like curved arrows, etc.

I gave Paint.Net and IrfanView a try, but they don't seem to support more sophisticated shapes than straight lines, circles, or rectangles.

If this is correct, does someone know of a PSP-equivalent open-source solution for Windows?

Thank you.

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+1, great question - I'm also interested in a replacement. Was a fan of Paint Shop Pro 7 & 8, but boy did they mess it up some time after that. I bought Paint Shop Pro X2 last year, and it sucks. X2's UI now looks like crap and it comes with some lovely Big-Brotheresque license monitoring software that wants to run its service all the freakin' time. So, go open source! – Chris W. Rea Sep 1 '09 at 11:34
I've been using PSP7.02 since forever because I couldn't find anything as lean and great. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun Sep 1 '09 at 11:54
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my first choice would be PhotoFiltre, suits me best for QD image work on the go, GIMP, like PSP and PS, is just too heavy for on a netbook or medium spec notebook like mine. PhotoFiltre beats Paint.NET hands down. it is free but not open source. snapfiles.com/get/photofiltre.html – Molly7244 Sep 1 '09 at 13:15
PhotoFiltre works well portably too. – Umber Ferrule Oct 1 '09 at 10:29
Thanks for the pointer to PhotoFiltre. I'll check if it supports PainShop-like arrows akvis.com/img/examples/chameleon/arrow-creation/… – OverTheRainbow Oct 1 '09 at 14:38
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4 Answers

up vote 15 down vote

In Paint.NET's Line/Curve Tool you have the option to choose how the line ends, so you can do curved arrows.

Example:

enter image description here

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+1 to you too, since you seemed to have posted Paint.NET first. – Ray Hayes Sep 1 '09 at 12:53
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Paint.NET rocks! Especially their text tool which kicks PaintShop Pro's into touch. – Umber Ferrule Oct 1 '09 at 10:28
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up vote 13 down vote

Try The Gimp; it's opensource http://www.gimp.org/

GIMP is a multi-platform photo manipulation tool. GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is suitable for a variety of image manipulation tasks, including photo retouching, image composition, and image construction.

GIMP has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to

the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

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+1 because it is simply the best open source image editor. – Molly7244 Sep 1 '09 at 13:06
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But probably the one with the crappiest interface :-) – Joey Sep 1 '09 at 19:20
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up vote 2 down vote

The GIMP open source

Paint.NET is sort-of open source

Blender for 3D Modeling

InkScape for Vector Graphics

And, not open source, but free and noteworthy are the bubble of Online Free No-Download Image Editors. Aviary is my favorite, Image Editor, Color Editor, Image Markup, Effects Editor, Vector Editor

Don't forget Adobe Air applications...

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up vote 0 down vote

Paint Shop Pro has never been open-source and it's unfortunate that Corel decided to mess the whole application up. It's why I just continue to use Paint Shop Pro 8, which happens to be the last good version of PSP.

The Gimp, Inkscape and Paint.NET are reasonable alternatives and they seem to be the only bigger open-source applications. You could use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements but these aren't open-source. I like it how Elements can manipulate digital photo's, although it can result in some fun mistakes. Unfortunately, Photoshop itself is way too expensive and Elements just not complex enough.

Still, if you're willing to part from $999, Adobe Photoshop would be the best alternative. Or CorelDraw, although I don't want to spend a penny to Corel, since they broke my favorite graphics editor...

Or you just upgrade to Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, which is inexpensive and still seems to support most of the old functionality. It's just the user interface that I consider useless since I loved the way it used to browse my images.

It's just too bad that there's not enough interest by developers to work on an open-source product that would be as useful as PSP used to be...

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