Commons:Software

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This is a selection of programs designed to aid in media (graphics and audio) manipulation, as recommended by the Wikigraphists and Graphics Labs. These programs are considered very useful tools for the tasks of cleaning up, editing and creation of images, illustrations, maps, photographs and animations and the recording, editing and conversion of audio files.

Experienced Wikigraphists, several of them having improved their skills on the Graphics Lab itself, will be able to offer advice and assistance in the use of these programs, although each program usually has its own dedicated forums and tutorials that can be found online. The search strings constructed from the name of the program, followed by 'forum' or 'tutorial', will usually achieve desirable results from your favourite search engine.

This page contains a list of recommended software for creating and editing media files and tutorials as well.

Creation on commons
Photography terms Macro photography Image editing Softwares Graphic Lab(s)

[edit] Markers

Below are the free software recommended by the Wikigraphists at the Graphic Lab. These programs have been labeled the "stars" of cleaning up, editing and creation of images, illustrations, maps, photograph and animations.

Installing these on your computer will allow you to get more assistance and advice from other experienced Wikigraphists, several of them, having improved their skills on the Graphic Lab itself. Below are the 5 most usable and free, graphic programs, ordered according to their importance:

Name and Function	Operating System	Download	Example
Inkscape, specializing in the creation of vector images (SVG). It can also be used to export pngs and other bitmaps.	Linux; Windows; Mac OS X	All	(see more...)
GIMP, similar to Photoshop. Used for the retouching of images, and creating of raster graphics (PNG, JPG, GIF). Can also be used to create animations when the GIMP Animation Package (GAP) is installed.	Linux; BSD; Solaris; Windows; Mac OS X	Windows, Linux/BSD/Solaris Mac OSX
Gimpshop, a version of GIMP, modified to be more familiar to users of Photoshop, and said to have a less steep learning curve. (PNG, JPG, GIF)	Windows; Linux; Mac OS X; Solaris	All
hugin, for the stitching of panorama images, correction of perspective and various other things.	Windows; Linux; BSD; Mac OS X; Other Unix Systems	All
Blender, for the creation and editing of 3D images.	Windows; Linux x86/PPC; Solaris; Irix ; BSD; Mac OS X	All

See also: Commons:Created with ... templates for more

[edit] Tutorials for related topics

Manipulating meta data of media files like EXIF tags.
Commons:File types: File types allowed at Wikimedia Commons.
Commons:Media help: Help for how to play and view media files.
Converting video between different formats, especially into Ogg-Theora the single allowed video file type at Commons.
Help:SVG, Transition to SVG.
Help:Creating a DjVu file
Commons:Tools: Additional Functionality Tools on Wikimedia Commons.

[edit] Useful software

[edit] General software

These software packages have been recommended by the Commons community for use in image manipulation:

The GIMP, home page at www.gimp.org - High quality open source image editing suite, similar to Photoshop (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X). Windows version can be found at gimp-win.sourceforge.net. Opens and manipulates a lot of file formats including but not limited to JPEG, PNG and animated GIF's.
Inkscape, home page at www.inkscape.org - Vector graphics program, similar to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X)
OpenOffice.org, handles all types of images (reading SVG only with SVG Import Filter) (free, Open source - for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X)
ImageMagick, home page at www.imagemagick.org - Image conversion, effects, viewing... Particularly good for scripted and "batch" manipulation. (free, Open source - for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS 9 or X, and others)
GQview, home page http://gqview.sourceforge.net/ is an excellent image viewer. (Free software for GNU/Linux, unofficial port for Windows)
Paint.NET, home page at www.getpaint.net - free and open-source, with a good user interface, but Windows-only. Supports PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, and PSD (with plugin) as well as conversion between and manipulation of images in these formats.
IrfanView, home page at www.irfanview.com (Freeware - for Microsoft Windows. A multi-featured freeware tool, supports many image formats. Good at viewing/converting images.)
XnView, home page at www.xnview.com (Freeware - for Microsoft Windows. A multi-featured freeware tool, supports many image formats. Good at viewing/converting images, adding IPTC metadata and GPS coordinates).
XLS-Chart2JPG Save your Excel charts as JPG with a little macro.
Zamzar, home page at zamzar.com - offers an online file conversion service for various formats, including Ogg video and audio.
FreeFileConvert, home page at freefileconvert.com - allows user to convert files in different formats, supports most popular video, audio, document and image formats.

[edit] Panorama stitching / keystone correction

Hugin is a cross-platform free/open-source panorama photo stitching program. It can also be used for keystone correction. Examples: Category:Created with Hugin.
MS Image Composite Editor is a stitching program with advanced orientation adjustment view and supports planar, cylindrical, and spherical projections.
Autostitch is a windows stitching program which works fine with photos which were taken in regard of using them for stitching. Handling is very easy but there is no way of manual correction. Category:Created with Autostitch
ShiftN Freeware for automatic keystone correction of photos by detecting converging lines. Examples: Category:Corrected with ShiftN.

[edit] JPEG

JPEG is a lossy image format, most image editing software can encode and decode it but it is also possible to perform certain transformations on a JPEG losslessly.

Jpegcrop and jpegtran: jpegtran is a command line app that can perform a variety of lossless transformations on JPEG files; it can be used with MaPiVi for a GUI (although the selection preview size seems to be limited?). Jpegcrop is a command line tool with similar functionality, there is also a windows version available with GUI.
There is an EXIF tag, “Orientation”, which tells viewer software that the image must be rotated before being displayed. Unfortunately, not all software supports the tag, so some images may have the wrong value in it unnoticed. The tag can be edited using exiftool (e.g. it can be neutralized with “exiftool -Orientation=Normal”). See Commons:VP#Autorotation_using_EXIF_tag_with_MW_1.18 and Commons:EXIF for more details. Physical rotation of the image instead editing the tag can be lossy, see Commons:Media_for_cleanup#Sideways_pictures_or_pictures_with_noticeable_camera_tilt.
Cropbot allows one to crop JPEGs lossless, using jpegtran, so one does not need the software oneself.
jpegpixi is a CLI tool to interpolate pixels in the specified part of a JPEG image without affecting the rest of it, except for the blocks which contain that part. Also included is jpeghotp, which can find hot or dead pixels in otherwise black or white JPEG images and generate configuration for jpegpixi (that's useful if your camera has CCD defects). Source code and Debian packages are provided.
Freeware IrfanView for Windows (homepage) with the JPG_TRANSFORM plugin. For all lossless operations use menu options
BatchPurifier LITE is a free lossless metadata remover for Windows. Useful for users who wish to upload their photos without metadata to protect their privacy.
JPEGsnoop. Free and open source tool to repair and analyse corrupted JPEGs. Windows-only, but works well under WINE.

[edit] GIF

GIF should only be used for animations here, the tool list keeps that in mind.

gifsicle: A command line tool for making, manipulating, and optimizing animated gifs.
UnFREEz OSS GUI-tool for making animated gifs.

[edit] PNG

PNG is a lossless format to be used for any kind of diagram or screenshot for which SVG is not convenient.

OptiPNG: a command line tool for optimising PNG images
AdvPNG: a command line tool for further recompression of PNG images. Should be used after OptiPNG.
The GIMP (Windows Installers): is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free software and high quality image editing tool.

[edit] SVG

SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, is an XML-based vector graphics format. It can be created and edited by hand as a text file, or edited through a specialized program. Bitmaps (raster graphics) can be converted to SVG (especially diagrams, maps and so on should be)

See Help:SVG#Software for a list.

[edit] Ogg Vorbis (audio)

Vorbis is a lossy audio codec (See Vorbis).

Audacity can export projects in Ogg Vorbis format.
Mp3splt allows one to split Ogg Vorbis files without re-encoding.
Shtooka Recorder is a program for windows which allows automated recording of the pronunciations of many words, expressions from a text list. (you can record 500 words in 20 minutes). It can save files in Wav/Ogg/FLAC format (including Vorbis Comment tag). As of January 2012, the Shtooka website is offline and Shtooka can be downloaded from here.
Yazik Recorder is a cross-platform (Python)[1] equivalent of Shtooka Recorder.
http://youconvertit.com/

Also see the players for Ogg Theora videos below — they can also play Vorbis audio.

[edit] Ogg Theora (video)

Theora is a lossy video codec (see en:Theora). (Note: most software mentioned below should also be able to play Ogg Vorbis audio)

ffmpeg2theora is a command line theora encoder available for most operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
Videolan Client is an open source multimedia player also being capable to transcode files but having the advantage of supporting both a GUI as well as the command line; available for most operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
MPlayer is also an open source multimedia player also being capable to transcode files but having the advantage of supporting both a GUI as well as the command line; available for most operating systems including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
illiminable DirectShow filter for theora for playing ogg vorbis and theora in Windows Media Player and Winamp.
Transmageddon is a GUI based Linux program for converting video. It can take almost any format as its input and generate a very large host of output files.

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