Mac Graphics Freeware
Alice
Create 3D models and learn programming with an easy drag-and-drop method designed for students.
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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.
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Button Builder
Customize buttons for your website using some of the more than 50 pre-made buttons that come with this app.
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CocoViewX
A nice way to browse through your pictures. Full-screen mode is especially impressive.
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Colorate
Create harmonic colour palettes from a photograph. Great for designers looking for a colour scheme that fits in with their photos.
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Cosmic Painter
Create complex animated patterns and save them as QuickTime movies.
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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.
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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.
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Flickr Uploadr
Upload batches of pictures to flickr. Scale them, tag them, create new photo sets, choose who’s allowed to see your pix.
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FlickrBooth
Send your Photo Booth photos to flickr automatically or on a per-picture basis. You can title, describe and tag them.
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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. GIFfun can also be had for free.
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Also try: GIFfun
GIMP
Have you ever wished there were a free version of Photoshop? Well, there is — kind of. It’s called the GIMP, but it comes with a warning. You must have X11 installed on your mac to make this Unix-based program work. You’ll find X11 on your OS X installation discs. It’s not necessarily something you’ll want to fuss around with, but for some it might be worth it. The GIMP is not exactly Photoshop, but it many respects it comes close.
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Image Tricks
Use the power of Tiger’s Core Image to apply a number of cool effects to your pictures. You can also generate original images.
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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.
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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. It still hasn’t reached version 1.0, so it might not be a substitute for the big boys yet. Also, you must have X11 installed on your mac in ordered to run this Unix-based program. X11 can be found on your OS X installation discs, but you may want to steer clear of it unless you know what you’re doing.
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jahshaka
An open source realtime editing and effects system for graphic design, animation and compositing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Also try: MozoDojo
MilkyWay
Seeing is believing with this app, because what it does is unique. Once MilkyWay is up and running, you can click on the icon of a picture in the finder, and it will be displayed in a window giving it a nice 3D setting and a few controls. Whether such a thing is actually useful is up to you. The coolness factor alone may be enough.
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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.
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Pencil
Nice little drawing program creates 2D animations with the use of layers.
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Photopolis
Create a 3D cityscape using pictures from your photo library.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pixen
Edit your pixels with Pixen, and paint to your heart’s content — assuming you have the creativitiy.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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SmallImage
Get those JPEGs nice and compact for the web with batch processing that includes resizing, recompressing and removing embedded profiles.
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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.
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Also try: InstantShot!
Thumbscrew
Thumbscrew is a neat little program that puts borders and drop shadows on your pictures—a nice way to enhance your images.
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Tint
Tint is a small program that does one thing well — adjusts the colour balance of images.
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Tux Paint
Give your children hours of enjoyment with this simple paint program—or, what the heck, indulge your inner child.
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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.
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Also try: Blender
POV-Ray
Art of Illusion
