Pencilsheep - an excellent free and cross-platform photo editor

pencilsheep

Si are looking for a tool that allows them to do image editing and they have already tried some others, this article may be of interest to you.

Lthe tool that we are going to talk about today has as name pencilsheep and this is a professional photo editor whose main benefit is being able to use full GPU acceleration.

EThis is a free photo editor and graphics suite designed for beginners and professionals alike. Some of you may not have heard of this excellent tool, but I can assure you that it is one worth trying.

About Pencilsheep

Pencilsheep is completely free and is a cross-platform application so it is compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac.

The show itself is really cool. TIt has a ton of handy image editing toolsalong with some painting tools. There is even a free online version that you can try in your browser.

I admit that Pencilsheep sounds like a digital drawing program. But the main features revolve around image editing, just like Photoshop.

In addition to full GPU acceleration, works with layers, masks, layer styles, filters and interactive filter layers, supports HDR and support for digitizer table.

Pencilsheep performs all performance critical operations (blending, filters, painting tools, etc.) directly on the GPU.

Pencilsheep Features

Unlike traditional image editors (which don't use GPU computing, or only offer partial GPU acceleration), Pencilsheep has been specifically designed from the ground up to fully utilize the GPU for all image manipulations.

pencilsheep 1

As a consequence, for many tasks, Pencilsheep is faster than traditional image editors.

In addition to applying filters destructively, as in traditional image editors, Pencilsheep also allows you to place filters as interactive filter layers anywhere in the filter stack.

Filter layers update automatically when underlying layers are changed. Instant recomposition is made possible by Pencilsheep's fully GPU-accelerated rendering.

Pencilsheep supports several different color formats with different bands and bit depths (up to 32 bits per channel / 256 bits per HDR pixel). Each tool and filter fully supports all available formats.

De the characteristics that can be highlighted, we can find:

  • It has an online version and a desktop version
  • Allows the creation and management of layers, masks, layer styles
  • Filters and settings
  • Adjustment Layers and Filter Layers
  • Full GPU acceleration
  • HDR support
  • Image browser
  • Stock Image Library
  • Font Browser
  • Camera Raw File Importer

How to install Pencilsheep on Linux?

For those who are interested in being able to install this excellent tool on their systems, They can do it by following the instructions we share below.

We are going to do the installation of Pencilsheep by using the Snap packages, in this way we can guarantee the installation in most current Linux distributions.

That is why we must have the support to be able to install applications of this type in our system.

Already being sure of being able to install this type of applications our system, we are going to open a terminal and in it we are going to execute one of the following commands according to the type of installation we want to have.

For install a stable version we must typer:

sudo snap install pencilsheep

If you want to have the Relase Candidate version (development version) of the program:

sudo snap install pencilsheep --candidate

Similarly for those who want to install a Beta version:

sudo snap install pencilsheep --beta

Now for those who want to make or check if there is an update of this utility, just run the following command:

sudo snap refresh pencilsheep

I think Pencilsheep is worth giving it a try.

It is by no means the biggest or baddest program when it comes to image editing and of course it is not a total alternative to Photoshop or Gimp either.

But it offers a set of photo editing tools and a trusted paint program that Linux users will appreciate.


6 comments, leave yours

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  1.   Esteban Ruiz said

    Hello, I'm Esteban from Buenos Aires ARGENTINA
    Newbie to linux
    I have raspberrypi

    When I run the installer I get the following message
    pi @ raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo snap install pencilsheep
    sudo:snap:command not found
    pi @ raspberrypi: ~ $

    I await your comment
    Thank you

  2.   Vicente Chunga Tume said

    It seems like an excellent idea to make animations; but I have a detail, the language, since I generate material for lesser students who do not master English.

  3.   Techno Planet said

    Hi Esteban, from what you show you are working with a Respberry. If you are using the Raspbian operating system, you first have to install snaps support by doing this:

    - sudo install snapd

    Then yes, you can install any snap without much difficulty.

    Greetings and I hope the contribution will serve you.

    We also try to collaborate in this great world of Free Software, we are in http://www.planetatecno.com.uy

  4.   Vicente Chunga Tume said

    It seems like an excellent idea to make animations; but I have a detail, the language, since I generate material for younger students who do not speak English.

  5.   Techno Planet said

    Esteban, sorry for the rush (things from working haha). The full command is:

    - sudo apt install snapd

    and then reboot the system to take the changes.

  6.   GSO said

    Thanks for sharing, this program is looking good, I'm going to try it. Cheers!