LazPaint is a surprisingly good image editor.
I’ve looked around at many raster image editing apps for Linux, and I have mostly been disappointed.
- The Gimp is hard to use and has lagged behind major other platforms’ banner image editors.
- Pinta is “ok” but has graphics glitches on my hardware (Intel).
- Inkscape is good but specializes in vector graphics, not raster images.
- Krita looks like it might be particularly good for artists using a tablet, but is mediocre for raster image tasks and has a complex interface.
I’ve also tried various “simple” apps such as KolourPaint [1] and Drawing [2], but these are generally more like “MS Paint” and have limited capabilities when importing images for various editing tasks.
LazPaint has all of the major features you would expect, without an over-complicated UI–selection, layers, gradients, filters, shapes, opacity, many file formats etc… However, it is not wrapped in a Flatpak, so you need to download the “deb” file and install with Eddy (or the CLI):
https://github.com/bgrabitmap/lazpaint/releases/tag/v7.2.2
As an aside, I recently also discovered Pixelitor, and I think it’s another one to keep an eye one. The author seems to be making some great progress lately (most recent release in September 2023).
I think people expect GIMP to function identically to Photoshop and when it doesn’t people disregard it with the age old “hard to use and lags behind” argument. It’s really quite powerful and is easier to learn when you stop treating it like Photoshop which you’ve used for years.