How do you edit screenshots on GNOME?

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I am giving GNOME a try, and damn it is pretty beautiful.

Minimal set of apps included in Silverblue, Ptyxis, Imageroll, Extensionmanager as Flatpaks.

The screenshot tool works great.

Everything is also somehow faster than on KDE Plasma.

But Plasma spectacle has very good editing features. Pixelate, draw, etc.

I could layer spectacle and use it just for its editing features

I already filed an issue on splitting the image editing features into a library and using that alone. All KDE Apps use different image editing toolbars.

Also, Gwenview has many basic editing features, while the program is fast enough to be a good image viewer. Is there any good replacement? Otherwise I would just use Gwenview Flatpak, but GNOME breaks all KDE apps.

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Removed kde-plasma

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Excuse me :exclamation: :exclamation: :eyes:

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I use swappy for annotation. It’s a holdover from when I was using Sway, but works well enough for my purposes. Usually I just need an arrow, but you can draw squares, circles, add text, and do slight blurring.

If I ever wanted to do something more complicated like cropping, I’d take it to GIMP.

Breaks them how?

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Swappy is interesting, thanks!

I will first try to just layer spectacle and just use its editing feature. GNOME locks down the screenshot feature, which is pretty good.

GNOME breaks these apps / these apps are broken on non-Plasma. They looked awful on COSMIC too.

Now that the KDE apps include their own icons it is semi-fixed, but the KDE apps had strange old icons anyways.

Also I think Adwaita overwrites the Breeze style or something? On KDE, GNOME apps work without issues, with a gsettings command I can even set the icons to adwaita. They look completely vanilla, but with all window decorations (found out this is a single gsettings command, really good).

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Want to make a howto? This is very cool, even though, similar to using GIMP instead or Gwenview, a way bigger application for such a small task.

Inkscape has a big learning curve. A howto could be really useful, as GNOME has no easy editing feature.

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I was also missing a simple screenshot editing app for GNOME. Then I gave Inkscape a try, and while complex, it doesn’t require much learning to find and use those 4-5 tools (ovals, rectangles, lines, text) needed for simple screenshot editing. The good thing is that the app remembers the settings from the previously used tools (e.g. if you set a stroke width and color for the rectangle tool, it keeps that setup the next time you open the program).

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There are also a few online image editors that are pretty good. One that i use is Photopea, which is an almost feature complete clone of Photoshop in a web browser:

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Screenshot from 2024-07-24 14-59-271920Ă—1206 271 KB

I would prefer a small local app, but this works well for any editing tasks.

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The Inkscape Water Cooler if for this and general talk about its use and functionality. Updates and other points.

I honestly don’t get the arguments around big app / little app. I typically just look for tools, use tools.

The Inkscape WaterCooler has 2 such post, typically done within 5 steps. So the learning curve argument is equal to any application. Which is the reason why i started the thread and those screenshot editing post. Demystifying the app and making it fairly trivial no matter the platform.

If anything, Inkscape has the depth for you to do more if you want to.

Sometimes I think orientation is the problem, but literally

  • Left bar for tools
  • Right Bar for Save/Exports
  • Bottom bar for Stroke/Fill, Colors and Zoom
  • Quick bar>Stroke>Stroke Style for Arrows, Dotted Lines and other tricks.

Please do not hijack my next few Inkscape WaterCooler Post ! :laughing:
:bulb: Please participate in the next few Inkscape Water Cooler Post !

This typically falls into the Big App / Little App / Learning Curve argument.

  • App too big , Need Online app to solve that problem.
  • Need to leaarn New Tool with Complex UI
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Okay while diving into this for a bit i’m now trying out “flameshot”, which looks to be a small but quite capable screenshot tool with editing options. Some nice features include a blurring tool and a color-inverse tool:

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Added inkscape, spectacle

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how can flameshot work if GNOME locks down the screenshot capability? Does it need to ask for a portal? Does it work on Wayland? Or do you just use it for editing?

But true, Flameshot could be an alternative to spectacle for just the editing capabilities.

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I’m running it as a custom shortcut tied to the printscreen button, which also reacts to “Shift + Super + s” on my keyboard. I’m launching a shell file that runs flameshot, that circumvents the lock down

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$ cat /usr/local/bin/flameshot-gui-workaround 

#!/bin/bash
flameshot gui
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It breaks EVERY UPDATE.Which is why the first line of my Post in the Inkscape Water Cooler is

  • "Wanted to add some cool things to this Inkscape thread useful for those who are current Gnome Users and users of the cool Flameshot screenshot tool.

Currently Gnome and Flameshot have a difficult relationship. . . Flameshot breaks after every release." :laughing:

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Got ya

It works so far, let’s see how long this thing stays intact :yum:

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Till September/October. . . When we will be arguning in the Github Issue tracker about why a change in Portals causes a pop up notification asking to allow Flameshot to grab the screen. Then still not launch, because the application would need to launch a UI breaking the PrtSc functionality and the bash script no longer works ! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

I’ve been using Flameshot for several years, it’s fantastic. But when a screenshot tool needs a bash script to get around a Portals permission, or a gsettings addition, or the number of things over the years. Spending a day or two sometimes even weeks Just to be able to use the tool, what’s the validity of the tool? It breaks workflow entirely.

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It’s a shame yes, someone with more intimate knowledge should maybe fork the code and make it more GNOME friendly.

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I abandoned my project. . . Please do not bring it up. :sob: If you find the Github I will disavow all knowledge of it. :male_detective:t5:

Honestly, Spending 50hrs on developing a solution that would be GTK friendly, and Gnome friendly is a lot of work. Gnome will break things release to release. Maintaining a project is a lot of work and stress.

In 50hrs I could learn Inkscape and spend the other 48 hrs editing screeshots, drawing, and tracing comic book characters for fun.

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PhotoPea can also be ran offline, but you need a script and a downloaded website to do that, and it seems the dev is constantly killing projects trying to do that XD

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Imagine going through all of that just to edit screenshots ! :laughing:

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