Featured graphics
123D Make
Turn 3D models into real world creations made out of any flat material you can cut. Easily convert any 3D STL or OBJ file into a physical object using automatically generated 2D build plans and animated assembly instructions.
Alice
Create 3D models and learn programming with an easy drag-and-drop method designed for students.
Download site
Comment
— 3 so far
Share
ArtRage
Just check out the website to see some of the incredible art created with this painting program. If you’re artistically inclined, you’ll want to take ArtRage for a spin. For the free version, scroll down to the ArtRage 2 demo. There is no time limit, plus you can load, save and print.
Download site
Comment
— 5 so far
Share
Avery DesignPro
Design and print labels, business cards, dividers, T-shirt transfers, greeting cards and more, using templates and stock art. Merge data from Address Book, Mail, iPhoto and iTunes.
Blender
Open-source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
Cenon
Desktop publishing app features images, complex paths, text functions, color shading, printing, and a multitude of import and export abilities. Vector graphics conversion for supported formats.
CocoViewX
A nice way to browse through your pictures. Full-screen mode is especially impressive.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
Colorate
Create harmonic colour palettes from a photograph. Great for designers looking for a colour scheme that fits in with their photos.
Download site
Comment
— 3 so far
Share
Cosmic Painter
Create complex animated patterns and save them as QuickTime movies.
Download site
Comment
— 7 so far
Share
DrawBerry
Vector drawing program based on CoreImage technology. A bit on the low end, but nonetheless quite capable.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
DrawIt Lite
At last a pretty darn good freeware drawing program for the Mac. It has fewer features than the pro version, but it still makes a great vector tool.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
Expression
It’s a full-featured vector graphics program along the lines of Illustrator or Freehand. Expression was recently acquired by Microsoft and, for reasons unknown, is available for free. Get it while you can from MacUpdate.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
Flickr Uploadr
Upload batches of pictures to flickr. Scale them, tag them, create new photo sets, choose who’s allowed to see your pix.
FlickrBooth
Send your Photo Booth photos to flickr automatically or on a per-picture basis. You can title, describe and tag them.
Fotor
Collection of image editing tools includes white balance, exposure, brightness, color contrast, saturation, and sharpness. Also, straighten, crop, rotate, and manipulate the image.
Free Ruler
Horizontal and vertical rulers measure distances on your screen to the exact pixel. It’s dead simple to use, and especially handy for designers who want their creations pixel perfect. Free Ruler hasn’t been updated in years, but it’s fine the way it is.
GifBuilder
A stalwart of the Mac computing world, GifBuilder has been around since 1996. Many people love the ease with which it can be used to create animated GIFs, and a carbon port for OS X was created in 2000.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
GIMP
Have you ever wished there were a free version of Photoshop? Well, there is — kind of. It’s called GIMP, and it does a good job of such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. OK, it’s is not exactly Photoshop, but it you may find it comes close enough. And in case you were worried, GIMP no longer requires that X11 be installed on your Mac.
Download site
Comment
— 5 so far
Share
Hugin
Assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more.
iBooks Author
Create and publish multi-touch books for iPad with this free tool from Apple. Start with a template and use drag-and-drop to customize it with photo galleries, movies, slideshows and 3D objects. Preview it on an iPad, then submit it to the iBookstore.
Download site
Comment
— 3 so far
Share
Iconverter
Choose a program and convert its icon to an image. Formats include PNG, TIFF, JPG, GIF, ICNS and ICO. Batch processing is available and you can decide on the background colour. This tool is invaluable if you need to post the image of an icon on a website — in a software review, for example. Unfortunately, it seems to have been abandoned by the developer, but it’s still available as a direct download from MacUpdate.
Image Tricks
Apply a number of cool effects to your pictures: adjust colours, add blurs, distort with twirl, bump and pinch, or stylize with mosaic, crystalize and halftone. Plus much more. You can also generate original images using similar effects.
ImageOptim
Drag and drop .jpeg, .png and .gif images and see them instantly slim down. My pic of a baby relaxing in a tub on a hot day lost 15 per cent of its bulk. This open source app works by finding the best compression parameters and removing unnecessary comments and colour profiles. Which is just what you want to make websites load faster.
ImagePlay
Easily add effects to your images with ImagePlay. Reflect, shimmer, glow — the list goes on. And you’re not limited to just one effect. You can layer them one on top of the other. A guided tour makes learning easy.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
Inkscape
If only there were a free version of Illustrator … or FreeHand … or CorelDraw. Inkscape aspires to be all these things and has lots of support. You must have X11 installed on your Mac in order to run this Unix-based program.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
jahshaka
An open source realtime editing and effects system for graphic design, animation and compositing.
JustLooking
Drag and drop your picture files onto a canvas to have a quick look at them. Then navigate through other files in the same directory. Nice transitions.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
LiveQuartz
A free image editor based on layers and CoreImage filters. You have the layers on the left and the filters on the right of the window. To edit an image, just drag it into the layers’ list and it will be added as a new layer.
MacOSaiX
Use a whole bunch of little pictures to make a big picture — and maybe make a statement while you’re at it. The examples shown at the MacOSaiX website tell the story. And if you can’t get enough of this stuff, try MozoDojo.
Download site
Comment
Share
Also try: MozoDojo
Meme Generator
Have mindless fun taking bizarre photos that have been circulating around the Internet — annoying Facebook girl, for example — and applying your own slogans to them. Or, as the website version puts it: “Bluntly offensive statements and careless advice with animal icons.”
Paintbrush
A Cocoa-based paint program similar to Microsoft Paint and the now-defunct MacPaint. It can open and save to most major image formats, including BMP, PNG, JPEG, and GIF.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
Pencil
Nice little drawing program creates 2D animations with the use of layers. Create traditional hand-drawn cartoons using both bitmap and vector graphics.
Photopolis
Create a 3D cityscape using pictures from your photo library.
PhotoRetouch DigiCam
PhotoRetouch DigiCam does indeed touch up your photos. Improve them or warp them for fun. This free version has a lot more features than you might expect.
Picasa
Organize photos wherever they might happen to be on your Mac. Easily upload, email and blog about your photos. Integrate with online Picasa Web Albums and sync with the desktop app.
Pipette
Quickly and easily grab the colour of any pixel on the screen and copy it in hex format, as used in CSS files, or in paint programs, such as Adobe Photoshop.
PixelNhance
PixelNhance is one of the best of the bunch, but it’s been hard to find since the developer has discontinued it. Caffeine Software has a download link that works as of this writing, but unfortunately it hasn’t been reliable in past. In addition to the link below, you can try this one at 5 star.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
Pixen
Edit your pixels with Pixen, and paint to your heart’s content — assuming you have the creativitiy.
QuickImage CM
A contextual menu that lets you view and edit images in a floating window in the Finder. Just control-click on a picture’s icon in Finder and a menu will pop up with a QuickImage option. Once you have the picture open, you can send it to a printer, convert it to another format, create an HTML tag for it, and much more.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
Scribus
This open source alternative to the likes of QuarkXPress and InDesign supports CMYK colour, separations, ICC colour management and versatile PDF creation. It may take some getting used to, but there is a strong community of users to offer support.
Seashore
It’s full of cocoa and open source goodness, so Seashore is worth keeping an eye on this program as it develops to its potential — a free version of Photoshop?
Download site
Comment
— 3 so far
Share
Shape Collage
Use an assortment of pictures on your Mac to create collages in various shapes — hearts, circles, squares, or a something of your own design. Control sizing, spacing, backgrounds and borders. Watch an animation of the collage being created.
Sip
Sip sits in your menu bar ready for a click that lets gives you a loupe to select a color anywhere on the screen. Choose from as many as a dozen color formats. Store selections in a history and paste them at will.
SketchBook Express
Excellent drawing program has many of the features of the pro version. The main difference is that you can’t save files with layers intact. Tools include pencils, markers, airbrushes, erasers, fills, blurs and sharpens. Download from the Mac App Store
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
SketchUp
Google’s 3D modeling software tool lets you place your models in Google Earth. Examples of where it could be used are remodelling a kitchen, landscaping a backyard or adding a deck to your home.
Skitch
Take screenshots or photos or make your own sketch from scratch, then edit or annotate and share easily with others. (Note: Acquired by Evernote in August 2011, and now completely free.)
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
SmallImage
Get those JPEGs nice and compact for the web with batch processing that includes resizing, recompressing and removing embedded profiles.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
SnapNDrag
If you’re not content with the built-in way of taking screen shots with your Mac, give SnapNDrag a try. You click to capture a PNG, TIFF or JPEG, then drag the image off to wherever you want — your e-mail application, for example.
Download site
Comment
Share
Also try: Capture Me
Sweet Home 3D
Interior design app helps you place your furniture on a house 2D plan, with a 3D preview. Choose from a variety of rooms and objects to put in them.
Thumbscrew
Thumbscrew is a neat little program that puts borders and drop shadows on your pictures — a nice way to enhance your images.
Download site
Comment
— 7 so far
Share
Tint
Tint is a small program that does one thing well — adjusts the colour balance of images.
Tux Paint
Give your children hours of enjoyment with this simple paint program — or, what the heck, indulge your inner child.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share
Wings 3D
Create three-dimensional models such as a frog or, well, how about SpongeBob Squarepants. Check out the gallery to see the amazing things that are possible. Actually, there seems to be no shortage of entries in this category, with Blender, POV-Ray and Art of Illusion to round things out.
Download site
Comment
Share
Also try: POV-Ray
Art of Illusion
Xee
Lightweight and fast browser is designed to be a serious tool for image viewing and management, with a sleek and powerful interface. This replacement for Apple’s Preview is very fast, and uses less memory than most other image viewing tools.
Download site
Comment
— 2 so far
Share
XnConvert
Batch image-converter and resizer supports common formats such as JPG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, Camera RAW, JPEG2000, WebP and OpenEXR in addition to over 500 other image formats. Operations include rotating, adding watermarks, adding text, and adjustments for brightness, shadows and more.
Download site
Comment
— 1 so far
Share