Fotographix- Portable, Multiple-Layered Image Editor [Win]

When Charnita wrote this piece on 8 Simple Free Photoshop Alternatives that are under 2 MB, I discovered Fotographix. And I was VERY impressed at how well it can do its job.

This 348KB download is a ZIP file that extracts to 685KB. It is a totally portable application and is very powerful and familiar to users of Photoshop. After downloading the ZIP file from the developer’s website, simply run the EXE file and you will see something similar to a Photoshop start-up screen. When it has loaded, you will be presented with a blank template, toolbars on the left and layers on the right.

People who have used graphics editors before will feel right at home.

To create a new canvas, press Control+N or choose “New” from the file menu. You can choose the dimensions before it is created.

Let’s try her out and see what she can do! I instantly opened a file by hitting File – Open

You can see that the image I have just opened is a layer, that makes this a layered graphics program just like Photoshop or Gimp. This means you can modify one layer without touching another. Next, I closed this plain, ordinary GIF file and tried to open a PSD file which is Photoshop’s native file format.

Let’s select the fill bucket, like you see in the above picture. Then, point at any blank space and fill like so…

We can undo it by pressing Control+Z. The hot keys are the same as well! Next, let’s try to add some text to a new layer. Select the Text tool from the left toolbar, it’s the button with a capital T. You can select your font and size by hitting the Choose button next to ‘Font’

Hit OK and you will see your text in a new layer:

You can turn layers on and off by checking or unchecking the box next to the layers name on the right. And also just like Photoshop, you can automate actions. In Photoshop, you can record and play back actions to make repetitive task a lot easier. Here, you can create script files with commands available in the Help section. You can then play these scripts back on an image — automating common actions like re-sizing or crazy off-the-wall things like distorting images.

Do you use Photographix or another lightweight graphics editor? If so, we would love to hear your take on it and any tips or tricks you care to share!

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