fotoxx

Fotoxx - current release 13.06.2
Fotoxx is a free open source Linux program for photo editing and collection management. The goal is to meet most user needs while remaining fast and easy to use.

Click the image above to see a full-size image.

Short Overview
Navigate a large image collection with a thumbnail browser, click on images to view or edit. Import RAW files and edit with deep color. Save revised images as JPEG, BMP, PNG (8/16 bits), or TIFF (8/16). Select an object or area within an image (outline, follow edges, spread into matching tones), apply retouch functions, copy and paste, resize, blend, warp, etc. without using layers. Edit functions have fast feedback using the full image. A comprehensive set of retouch and transform functions is available. See the example images below to get an overview. Add metadata (tags, geotags, dates, ratings, captions ...) to images and search images using metadata plus folder/file names or partial names. Fotoxx uses your image files wherever they are and maintains an index for fast searching. Metadata can be shared with other photo apps if they are standards compliant (no lock-in). Fotoxx is easy to use but unconventional, so please read the user manual (at least a few pages) before jumping in.

See also the fotoxx demo videos and the example images below.

Long Overview

Overall Operation

Thumbnail browser and navigator, variable thumbnail size or list view.
Click on a thumbnail image to view or edit, or use a File Open dialog.
View and edit most image formats and camera RAW formats.
Internal edit calculations use float-32 (24 bits per color).
Menu-driven function selection, with toolbar for frequent functions.
Edits have live feedback using the whole image or zoomed section.
Edits are accumulated. Stepwise undo/redo and before/after compare.
Edit the whole image or a selected object or area within the image.
Use the mouse to select/enclose an object or area to edit. No layers.
Select using freehand draw, follow edge, spread into matching tones, others.
Selections can be cut out, saved, pasted, resized, rotated, edited.
Zoom in/out with mouse clicks or mouse wheel. Edit zoomed image.
Scroll/pan a zoomed image by dragging the mouse, also diagonally.
Save edited image: replace, save as new version, save as new file name.
Saved image formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG (8/16), TIFF (8/16 bits/color).
Comprehensive user guide is available in English, Spanish and Italian.
F1 key pops-up the current menu topic in the user guide.

Retouch Functions

Brightness/color/gamma curves: drag curves using the mouse while
watching a live image (sub-second response on a strong PC).
Remove color castes, even if they vary across the image.
One-click white balance.
Sharpen, Blur, Noise reduction.
Red-eye removal: usually 1 click each, with backup method for hard cases.
Expand and/or flatten brightness distribution (a frequent quick fix).
Tone Mapping (enhance details without changing overall contrast).
Fix brightness uniformity problems (vignetting and others).
Smart erase: remove power lines, ground litter, etc. from photos.
Anti-Alias: suppress pixelation ("jaggies") in low resolution images.
Remove dark spots on images from dusty scanned slides.
Make calibrated color adjustments or match specific colors.
Find and fix hot/dark pixels (from camera sensor defects).
Remove chromatic aberration (color fringes).
Edit individual pixels or small areas using the mouse.
Paint over an unwanted object with background taken from elsewhere.
Retouch functions can be amplified/attenuated by initial brightness/color/contrast.
"Paint" retouch functions locally and gradually using the mouse.

Transform Functions

Trim (crop): drag a mask or directly set desired size and aspect ratio.
Resize: use 1/2, 2/3 etc. or set desired size. Lock or change aspect ratio.
Rotate in 90 degree steps or use any angle. Level by dragging the edge.
Flip (mirror) horizontal or vertical.
Make a black/white or color negative, or positive from negative.
Convert to black/white with sepia tint (aged photo effect).
Write text on image: adjustable font, color, transparency, angle, watermarks.
Warp an image to fix perspective, straighten curves, or special effects.
Flatten a photo of a curved page from a thick book, stretching squished text.

Combine Image Functions

HDR: combine dark/bright images, adjust relative inputs by dragging curves.
HDF: combine close/far focus images to get a greater focus depth.
Suppress noise by combining and averaging multiple high-noise photos.
Remove transient people or cars: combine photos from different moments.
Panorama: combine 2-4 overlapped images horizontally or vertically.
Hand-held photos work OK (some care is needed but not a tripod).

Arty Transforms

Posterize an image (reduce color depth).
Convert photo to drawing (charcoal, blackboard, colored lines).
Add embossing effect (surface depth, 3D texture).
Make tiles: any size with or without borders. Pixelate to obscure a face.
Make a Roy Lichtenstein effect: convert image into a matrix of dots.
Simulate a painting: aggregate adjacent matching tones into larger patches.
Paint or unpaint using the mouse, with variable brush size and transparency.
Convert a photo into a cartoon-like drawing.

Metadata Functions

Show all metadata in a popup window, or a compact report with key items.
Add tags, geotags, ratings, comments, captions to images (using EXIF/IPTC).
Search images using these criteria plus folder/file names (partial match too).
Search images with imbedded geotags by location, add geotags to images.
Search output is a thumbnail gallery. Search speed is nearly instantaneous.
View locations of geotagged images on a world map. Click a location to get a
gallery of images from that location. Click gallery thumbnail to view or edit.
Manage tags: create, delete, group into categories.
View and edit any metadata (EXIF, IPTC, etc.).
Search and report any metadata, show thumbnail gallery with metadata.
(search speed for non-indexed metadata: few thousand images per minute).
Methods are standards compliant and data can be shared with other apps (no lock-in).

Other Functions

Build a custom graphic menu in a popup window. Add your most frequently
used functions and arrange their layout using the mouse.
Slide-show mode: arty transitions, optional keyboard navigation.
Select images from the gallery browser, burn a CD/DVD.
Brightness distribution graph, updated live with image edits.
Batch functions: rename, resize/export, revise tags, import RAW files.
View thumbnail gallery of most recent images, click thumbnail to open.
Build named image collections, view, add, delete, reorder, export, slide-show.
Monitor color/contrast and gamma test patterns are provided.
Grid Lines (horizontal, vertical, vary count/spacing, shift positions).
Print images using standard paper formats or custom dimensions.
Change the color profile of an image, e.g. Adobe RGB <--> sRGB.
Use Gimp, ImageMagick, etc. as plug-in edit functions (minor setup needed).
Switch GUI between English and any of the supported languages.
Update translations while using Fotoxx, see changes immediately.
Generate thumbnails and search index from existing image files
(one-time initialization - maintained automatically thereafter).

Languages
The GUI is available in English, Catalan, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.
A comprehensive user guide is provided in English, Spanish and Italian.

Hardware
Fotoxx works best on a strong computer. Up to 4 processor cores are used. Netbooks are generally too slow for editing but adequate for viewing.

Performance
Most functions respond in less than a second on a strong PC. Some composite image functions (panorama, HDR, others) may need a minute or more to combine several large images.

Downloads
Fotoxx can be downloaded from many places. Watch out for very old releases.
Get the latest version here:

Tarball with source code, make file, user guide: tarballs
DEB and RPM packages

Screenshots for a few of the user dialogs

Click to see a full-size image

Usage Examples

The examples below show the main functions available in fotoxx.
Click on the small images to see a full-size image.
If you are using a smart phone, STOP.
The examples will be useless on such a small screen.

Navigation

View a large collection of image files using a thumbnail gallery. Click on a thumbnail to view or edit a full-size image. Move around within gallery pages and navigate to other pages. A gallery normally corresponds to a directory (folder) containing image files. It may also contain the results of an image search or a named collection (images from diverse directories).

Custom Popup Menu

The Fotoxx menus are large and finding the function you want may take time. You can put the functions you use most frequently into a small popup window, and arrange the layout as desired. The popup is activated with a toolbar button - the star symbol. You can use text or icons or both. Drag the menu items with the mouse to arrange as wanted. The popup window can be positioned anywhere.

RAW file import

The first image is the JPEG produced by the camera. The 2nd image is the RAW file from the camera, converted to TIFF-16. The 3rd image is the edited TIFF file saved as a JPEG file. The dark areas were lightened and color was slightly increased.

Search Images

Add tags (keywords), geotags, titles, captions, dates, and ratings to images. Search images using these criteria as well as image file and directory names (also partial match). Matching images are shown in a thumbnail gallery. Click a thumbnail to view or edit, or step through sequentially. Search speed is thousands of images per second. Tags, etc. are stored inside the images using EXIF and IPTC standards. They can be shared with other photo programs if they are standards compliant.

Search Metadata

Find images with any desired metadata, show thumbnail images with metadata text. Click a thumbnail to view full-size. There are also functions to view the key metadata for an image, view all available metadata, or edit any metadata. The search speed is slower (around 100 images per second) for metadata that is not indexed and must be read from the image files.

Geotags

Newer cameras with GPS receivers can add geotags (location and earth coordinates) to images automatically. Fotoxx also has a function to find the earth coordinates for a given location (city, park, monument ...) and add geotags to a bunch of images at once. If many photos made in one location are located together in your collection, you can quickly process all of them (otherwise you have to hunt them down). If this work has been done, you can use the following geotag functions to find and display images from a given location as a gallery of clickable thumbnails.

Search Images Using Geotags

List the geotag groups for all images: group by countries, country/cities, or country/city/dates. Click on a list entry to see all the images in that group as a gallery of thumbnails. The example here shows 28 photos made in Jan. 2012 at Achensee, Austria. If listing by dates, you can consolidate dates that are separated by less than a given number of days.

Search Images by clicking on a world map

Click on a world map location to instantly see all the photos made in or around that location. Location names pop up as you move the mouse over the map. In this case, "Landshut" was clicked to retrieve 52 photos from Landshut.

Edit a selected object or area.

Little Mermaid was backlighted. The fix was to select her and flatten (spread out) her brightness distribution. Areas are selected using the mouse to draw a border around them. Use freehand draw, follow edges, or select matching tones (color and brightness). Edge effects can be blended out.

Copy and paste objects from one image into another

Flatten Brightness Distribution

An easy way to improve detail in areas that lack contrast. Uses a single sliding control with live feedback. Sometimes works miracles and sometimes not very effective. Good for fog/haze removal.

Brightness Ramp

Fix vignetting and other problems with brightness uniformity. This image was also enhanced afterwards (color, noise, tone-mapping).

Sharpen Image

Comparison of different sharpening methods on a badly blurred image.

Suppress Noise

Reduce noise in photos made under low-light conditions.

This is a printed image from a book, scanned at 600 dpi (part of a 41 megapixel image). The patterns left by machine printing were removed using the noise reduction "median brightness" method.

Select object and increase the color intensity

The right bird was selected and the color intensified (saturation) without changing the rest of the image.

Lighten dark areas / darken bright areas

Edit a brightness curve while watching the live output image.

Defog Shanghai.

Expand brightness distribution

Expand to include the full available range

Vignette

Compensate for radial brightness loss (vignetting), or highlight some part of the image. Response curve can be customized, saved and reused. Use the mouse to set the center for the response curve. Image can be brightened or darkened, or a color-caste can be added or removed.

Smart Erase

The power lines and roadside trash are gone, replaced with neighboring pixels. Select an object to erase using the mouse like a paintbrush. Click to erase. Neighboring pixels replace the erased area. This usually works well for small areas, or even larger areas when surrounded with fairly uniform background, like sky or grass.

Anti-Alias

Suppress pixelation or "jaggies" in low-resolution images. This happens typically when a photo has been reduced to a much smaller size. The original photo (left) is shown at 4x size to make the pixelation visible, and the processed image (right) is shown at 2x, since the Anti-Alias function doubles the image size. Anti-Aliasing is useful if the pixelated image is to be viewed at a larger size.

Remove Dust

Remove the dark spots from images made from dusty scanned slides. This example has dust with at least 3 different characteristics - gray on bright (boat), dark on bright (pier), and dark on dark background (lake). Three iterations were used to select each of these dust types. Removal rate is not 100% but close enough.

Remove unwanted objects

The rubbish was painted over using the mouse. Background was taken from several other surrounding areas. Look closely and you can see some duplications.

Erase printing, erase branch in foreground.
Improve color and contrast.

Rotate

Rotate in 90 degree steps or use the mouse to gently level a tilted image.

Remove chromatic aberration (color fringes).

Click to enlarge and view carefully. The left image is a photo taken from inside a church (small part of a large image). It has color fringes on the dark to bright transitions, and these were mostly eliminated in the edited version on the right. Slider controls change the scale of individual RGB color planes, and you simply adjust them to minimize the color bands. It works for the usual sort of chromatic aberration which increases radially from the center.

Tone Mapping

Increase contrast where it is weak without changing overall contrast. Details in the falls have been brought out from behind the mist, and the cliff has been brought out from the shadows.

This one was made deliberately stronger than needed. You can watch the image as you move a curve or slider. Response is sub-second on a strong PC.

This one was taken to extremes, giving the impression of an illustration.

Compare tone mapping to other forms of contrast enhancement.

This is a comparison of three methods to increase contrast. Gamma curve and brightness adjustments apply equally to all pixels in the image (or selected image area). Tone mapping increases small variations in brightness that occur within a limited area. Large brightness variations, or those occurring over a wider area, are less affected.

This is a large image (1940x1512, 0.54 MB jpeg).

HDR - High Dynamic Range Image

The lower image is a composite of the upper ones. Brighter areas were taken mostly from the darker image, and darker areas from the brighter image. Image alignment is automatic and hand-held photos work fine. Tone mapping was added after the images were combined.

The people moved between the photos, so ghosting can be seen.

HDR made from photos having significant camera movement and rotation.

HDF - High Depth of Field

Combine multiple photos of the same subject, each having a different focus distance. The combined image has a depth of field spanning all the input images. This function is very sensitive to changes in camera position or aiming point - these cause parallax errors and changes in image scale that cannot be fixed with simple translation and rotation. The software compensates to some extent. If you are careful not to move the camera too much, you can get good results. All photos here were hand-held.

This HDF required 10+ minutes of manual work to choose which input image to use for each area in the output image. This is done by choosing an input images and "painting" with the mouse. This can take time if there are lots of edges separating near and far details.

This one was easier because there are no overlaps of near and far details.

Stack - noise suppression

9 photos were made at ISO 1600 in a darkened room with a hand-held camera. My strong PC needed almost 1 minute to align and combine them into a low-noise image. This is part of the 10-megapixel image shown at full size.

Stack - paint

The two images were taken a few seconds apart, during which time the cyclist (left image) moved out and the red car (right image, left side) moved in. The images were combined, and the car and cyclist were removed by choosing one image or the other and "painting" with the mouse.

Panorama

Combine up to four images to make wide images. Rough alignment is done with the mouse and fine alignment is automatic. All photos here were hand-held.

Indoor scene with extra feature pasted in. Brightness and color matching was automatic.

Summer garden, 4 images with significant relative rotation.

Acropolis closeup. A case where turning the camera with minimal lateral movement was important for good image alignment. The guy in the striped shirt moved up the steps between the two photos, so he is seen twice in the panorama. The joint can be seen behind his upper image, since no blending was done.

A vertical panorama. Brightness and color matching was automatic.

Unbend

Sometimes panorama images must be straightened. Adjust while watching a live output image.

Unbend can also be used to fix perspective problems.

Straighten Image

Fix images photographed from an angle, e.g. gallery paintings, buildings, etc. Select the corners of a 4-sided polygon and transform it into a rectangle.

Flatten a photographed book page

A photo of a page in a thick book can be distorted by the curvature of the page where it meets the binding in the center (left image). The photo can be made square and flat, and the squeezed text near the binding can be stretched out to make it more readable (right image). Having a sharp focus over an extended depth is important. The process is not fully automatic but still quite simple: you must click on several points to outline the top and bottom page edges, to capture the page curvature. The black background shown here is not necessary.

Pixel Edit

Use for retouching. Pick a color from the image or from a palette. Variable brush size and transparency allow gradual change without edge effects.

Warp Image, 4 variations

Pull the image with the mouse. The image behaves like sheet rubber.

Improve Botticelli.
Straighten her eyes and smooth her skin.

Annotate Image

Write text on images. Select font, colors, transparencies, angles. Watermarks are made by writing faint text and embossing.

Fix-up a lousy photo

The photo above had multiple retouches to produce the one below. The functions used were flatten brightness distribution, increase contrast, increase color saturation, and tone mapping. These were applied in different areas of the image.

Fix-up a lousy photo

The photo was back-lighted and the Fall colors came out faded.
The following steps were made in sequence: select the entire image, un-select the sky, increase overall brightness with an upward slope for more contrast, select the foreground vegitation areas, add more contrast, add color saturation, add slight tone-mapping.

Suppress Haze

Select hazy areas, flatten brightness distribution, add color saturation, add tone mapping.

Art Effects

Convert a photo into a simulated drawing, painting, or embossing. These take a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on how long you want to play with the controls to optimize the result.