GrafxShop

GrafxShop is a comprehensive images editor that comes in handy when you want to create amazing paintings or just edit your pictures. It comes bundled with a nice selection of drawing elements, forms, vector objects, effects and adjustments.

It's wrapped in a cluttered yet accessible interface, divided into the editing area, image, light, painting and transformation panels, along with several toolbars. It's advisable to take your time and get familiarized with all the functions.

To get started, you can either make a new drawing or open a picture from the computer. For the canvas, you have to manually enter the width and height values. Plus, if you have a TWAIN device connected, it's possible to scan your documents and images directly into the app.

From the panels on the right, you have the options to adjust the fog, lightness, darkness and color levels, and apply several effects, like oil paint, glass frost, shear and gamma. You can rotate and resize the image (e.g. triangle, bell, hermite).

Other filters, such as twist, mossaic, tile, smoothen, color noise or seams can be applied from the menu. The program lets you apply a frame to your photo from several predefined masks, check the image information and view its histogram.

In vector drawing mode, it's possible to insert geometrical shapes (lines, arcs, circles, rectangles), custom text and other pictures. The output can be saved as JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, ICO or PCX image formats.

The bottom line is that GrafxShop is a reliable software solution designed to offer professional methods to create beautiful paintings, as well as edit and enhance photos using filters.