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Often I need to annotate (draw some arrows, lines, basic shapes like squares, ellipses etc and enter some text) on top of pictures (JPG, PNG images) and screenshots (again png images). I would also need to be able to crop, resize etc.

I tried the Gimp but I could only enter text and perform all image transformations but couldn't find a way to draw boxes etc.

I finally settled to Openoffice.org draw, but I know that isn't what I want, because in oodraw I need to insert my pic into a drawing and resize it (or the drawing) to fit and then go about making changes and finally export to png...

Is there any image editor that allows adding shapes and text to jpg & png files and save the modified file in its place? If the tool can also have template collections (like dia does) for shapes that is an added bonus.

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up vote 18 down vote accepted

Shutter (which you can install from the Ubuntu Software Centre or sudo apt-get install shutter) is a tool which has a variety of options for taking and annotating screenshots. (Note: I believe you can annotate any images or your choice, not just screenshots, but I am not 100% sure)

Shutter example screenshot

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+1 for shutter. Awesome screenshotting tool. The only thing it's been missing is imgur support. – aperson Sep 4 '10 at 22:50
@fluteflue: will give shutter a spin - though the image you have posted shows me it is very close to what I want. – koushik Sep 6 '10 at 5:38
shutter fits the bill. 2 notes: – koushik Sep 6 '10 at 6:15
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2 notes: 1. Inteface is indirect - need to click on the toolbar button for editing with in-built editor to get to the window which allows annotations to be made. 2. sudo aptitude install shutter doesn't install libgoo-canvas-perl which is required for enabling the edit button! Couldn't figure it out straight away: shutter complains of missing Goo::Canvas/libgoocanvas while aptitude search libgoocanvas show libgoocanvas3 is installed - the unmet (runtime) dependency is libgoo-canvas-perl. Thought of putting it here in case anyone wants to try out shutter after reading this. – koushik Sep 6 '10 at 6:22
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I just over-ruled the decision on that bug report, and uploaded a fix to maverick. libgoo-canvas-perl is now a Recommends and is installed by default. – andrewsomething Oct 5 '10 at 2:34
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up vote 6 down vote

I would use Inkscape (which you can install from the Ubuntu Software Centre or sudo apt-get install inkscape).

You will need to right click the image, select Open With -> Other Application... and chose Inkscape from the list. After you have done this the first time, you can just right click -> Open With -> Inkscape.

This will import the image into Inkscape and the page will be sized to fit the image. You can then make your annotations.

To save it, you need to use File -> Export Bitmap, click Browse... and chose your original image.

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+1 to inkscape. Man, this is awesome. IMO there is a learning curve though - albeit smaller than, say, photoshop. – koushik Sep 6 '10 at 5:47
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up vote 3 down vote

If you want to stay in gimp, you can add boxes and circles/ellipses. Use the rectangle or ellipse selection tool, and when you have the marching ants, on the main menu click Edit/Stroke Selection, then make your line style choice.

There are gimp plug ins to do arrows (that I have not tried), however it took only a few minutes to find a clip art site, copy an arrow image, convert it to a transparent-background gif using these directions, and add it as a new layer to the image. The arrow layer can be moved, rotated, scaled, colored, etc.

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Informative. I knew there was a way to do it with the gimp. I also indeed want to stay with the gimp - since I already use it for so many other things. Thanks for the tip. – koushik Sep 7 '10 at 9:25
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up vote 1 down vote

You also might want to try GnuPaint or Krita. Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but they might work for you. Both are in the Software Center.

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up vote 1 down vote

You can use firefox or Chrome web browser to do this. On firefox you have to install fireshot addon and on chrome "screen capture"

https://​addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/​addon/​fireshot

Unfortunately fireshot works on Windows only. Here's a list of such addons. Please test them on your own. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=screen+grab&appver=11.0&platform=linux

Screen Capture will do on Chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cpngackimfmofbokmjmljamhdncknpmg
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