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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.

Braiam
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koushik
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14 Answers14

117

Warning: Shutter is severely broken in Ubuntu 18.04 and was briefly dropped from Ubuntu for some releases, but it is now available again in 22.04 and newer.

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: You can annotate any images of your choice, not just screenshots.)

Shutter example screenshot

muru
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8128
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  • +1 for shutter. Awesome screenshotting tool. The only thing it's been missing is imgur support. – aperson Sep 04 '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 06 '10 at 05:38
  • shutter fits the bill. 2 notes: – koushik Sep 06 '10 at 06:15
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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 06 '10 at 06:22
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    Turns out there is a bug report, but it's been marked invalid :( http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shutter/+bug/549679 – 8128 Sep 06 '10 at 07:00
  • That is so not the right thing to do. Thanks for the pointer. Will follow up. – koushik Sep 07 '10 at 10:37
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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 05 '10 at 02:34
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    I use shutter a lot, but it requires a lot of files/libraries to be installed (mono stack), so it's quite a heavyweight app. – artfulrobot Mar 16 '12 at 20:40
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    @andrewsomething You can recommend that for Debian Squeeze, too. :) – Lenik May 23 '12 at 06:40
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    @XieJilei Debian fixed this in both unstable and testing, but it wasn't backported to stable (Squeeze). I don't know if the maintainer there would be interested in doing that, but you can always ask: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting – andrewsomething May 23 '12 at 18:39
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    @aperson imgur support is there now :) – davetapley Aug 10 '12 at 04:10
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    If you install libgoo-canvas-perl after launching shutter, make sure that you restart the program after closing it from the desktop as well as the icon tray. – ssh Jan 26 '14 at 15:53
  • oh no... (testAWS1)@pc03:~$ shutter Segmentation fault (core dumped) – Tom Oct 23 '16 at 19:02
  • After taking screenshot if you need, EDIT button is on top right, I couldn't find it soon on my wide screen :-) – iman Apr 25 '17 at 08:26
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    And now completely borked for me in 18.04. :(( And not just the edit button -- I'm amazed people have it running at all. :/ – Dɑvïd Jun 09 '18 at 12:03
  • @Dɑvïd Thanks for that link, sorted it completely for me. Using Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 and got it working. – thorne51 Jul 17 '18 at 09:52
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    If edit button in Shutter is disabled, use the instructions from here: https://itsfoss.com/shutter-edit-button-disabled/ – rlib Nov 15 '18 at 15:37
  • The text tool is already available: https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot/issues/187 – Stefano May 02 '19 at 16:09
  • It works fine in Ubuntu 19.10 if you add the unofficial PPA listed at https://shutter-project.org/downloads/third-party-packages/ – Alan Evangelista Mar 10 '20 at 18:50
  • Shutter from Ubuntu Software works like a charm in my Ubuntu 18.04. – karel Apr 17 '20 at 04:56
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    snap install shutter installs the software on 20.04, but the software itself is buggy (observed crash with stack smashing) and I could not find any annotation tools. It also is slow to start loading many plugins. Downvoted. – Roel Van de Paar Nov 06 '20 at 22:54
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    0.95 released with the fix https://launchpad.net/shutter/+announcement/28417 Removed most of the dependencies. Deb not yet updated in PPA – Arul Feb 03 '21 at 00:42
  • Shutter didn't work for me on Ubuntu 22 (Wayland). I didn't try it using X11. – Matthias Jan 11 '24 at 16:59
69

Flameshot

It comes with some cool annotation features like Freehand drawing, Lines, Arrows, Boxes, Circles, Highlighting, Blur, etc. It also comes with many on-screen buttons as well lots of customization options.

enter image description here

Its written with QT/C++ and it's very easy to install in Ubuntu(18.04+).

apt install flameshot

You can also try to compile for older versions.

0xC0000022L
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Gaurav Gandhi
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    It looks like a new text tool is implemented and will be in the next release. Yay! I'll log an enhancement request for opacity control, and we'll see if the dev goes for it. ;) – Dɑvïd Jun 09 '18 at 12:00
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    It wasn't in my distros repository, but I was able to find a binary in another distro here: https://repology.org/metapackage/flameshot/packages – virtualxtc Nov 08 '18 at 00:36
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    this is amazing thanks , for ubuntu < 18.04 download deb package from https://launchpad.net/~harish2704/+archive/ubuntu/ppa1/+packages – Mr Coder Nov 16 '18 at 13:55
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    +1 for this one but it's such a shame that it for some strange reason doesn't seem to allow annotations (text) to be added. – user1283068 Mar 15 '19 at 09:18
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    I have installed the latest release and text annotations are already available. – tomaskazemekas Aug 09 '19 at 06:47
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    @user1283068 Text Annotations available with current version. – Gaurav Gandhi Oct 14 '19 at 12:34
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    This is not a general image annotation tool, it's a screenshot tool. As far as I can tell, you can only annotate screenshots you took with it, not open existing images into it. – Alex Jan 23 '20 at 09:10
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    This tool is outstanding. Helps me provide fast and concise feedback on software bugs and solutions with UI. Taking a screenshot and annotating it and keeping it in clipboard to paste it into Slack, Teams, email or Jira issue is no hassle any more! – Marecky Sep 01 '20 at 12:54
  • @Alex, exactly. I love the tool for its screenshot and editing features, but it's indeed not possible to use it for editing, which is what was asked for. -1 – 0xC0000022L Sep 06 '20 at 19:06
  • @0xC0000022L, Read the question carefully, it asks for a screenshot as well, and this tool/answer provides a solution to that. – Gaurav Gandhi Sep 10 '20 at 05:34
  • @GauravGandhi indeed, read the question carefully: "Often I need to annotate on top of pictures and screenshots" (I removed the parts in parentheses to make the actual structure and meaning of the sentence stand out better) ... the question is clearly not about taking screenshots. But I'll concede that this fact doesn't necessarily warrant a downvote (retracted it after updating the URL). – 0xC0000022L Sep 10 '20 at 06:38
  • I do not trust this tool. I had a strange screenshot-like full-screen capture effect (photo flash blanking) AFTER a screenshot had already been taken and whilst it was being edited in the program. There was no other reason for this to happen. It also has an image upload function so clearly code for uploading images is there. No further proof, so it is just a single occurrence, but there you go. Uninstalled. – Roel Van de Paar Nov 06 '20 at 22:47
  • @RoelVandePaar, it probably a System UI glitch, and the tool is OpenSource, read the code/doc to see how it works and how the upload code is being used. https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot – Gaurav Gandhi Nov 11 '20 at 03:15
  • It doesn't work on fresh 20.04 – mevsme Jun 02 '21 at 12:04
  • @mevsme, I just tested and it works on Fresh Ubuntu 20.04. Are you trying with a minimal install variant? – Gaurav Gandhi Jun 07 '21 at 15:23
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    +1 just let's say, love it! – Armin Ghasemi Oct 10 '21 at 11:22
  • Works fine on 20.04

    Also wanna thank you for recommending this tool. Its 100x more powerful and efficient than chrome extensions

     – Suleman Jan 14 '24 at 21:42
25

Ksnip

Because I run KDE using GTK themed apps like Shutter is not ideal. After doing some research I settled on ksnip as a screenshot tool. It has pretty much everything you asked for (if you need to crop, just do it by taking another screenshot).

ksnip screen shot of a ksnip screen shot

Install

You can install ksnip buy downloading the .deb packages here https://github.com/DamirPorobic/ksnip/releases

or check if it's already in your version of Ubuntu's repository vi apt:

$ sudo apt install ksnip

Or via snap:

$ sudo snap install ksnip

Build and install from source

$ sudo apt install g++ build-essential \
libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 libqt5gui5 \
libqt5network5 libqt5svg5-dev libqt5widgets5 \
libqt5x11extras5-dev qt5-default qt5-qmake \
qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools \
cmake cmake-extras extra-cmake-modules

$ git clone https://github.com/ksnip/kColorPicker
$ cd kColorPicker/
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. && make
$ sudo make install


$ git clone https://github.com/ksnip/kImageAnnotator
$ cd kImageAnnotator/
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. && make
$ sudo make install


$ git clone https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. && make
$ sudo make install
Roel Van de Paar
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virtualxtc
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    As of mid-2020, ksnip is the way to go for annotating existing images. I tried flameshot, kazam, spectacle, shutter, XnView MP, krita, KolourPaint, and nomacs. – Roger Dahl Jun 28 '20 at 03:22
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    Ksnip now comes as a snap too sudo snap install ksnip, and works just fine on vanilla Ubuntu (i'm using 18.04). – Dale C. Anderson Sep 16 '20 at 17:01
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    snap install ksnip Is the only viable route now – Roel Van de Paar Nov 06 '20 at 22:32
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    It is very annoying it does not grab windows correctly. It includes (and at times non-uniform) border of 0-20 pixels around the window. – Roel Van de Paar Nov 06 '20 at 23:58
  • 2021, this is the only tool that works now a day in Ubuntu 20.04 – Kostanos Aug 24 '21 at 10:04
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    I can confirm @RoelVandePaar, on the left and top side of the image there are extra pixels added outside the selection area. The right and bottom do line up with the selection area. – raphael75 Nov 08 '21 at 20:09
13

I would use Inkscape

(that can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Centre or sudo apt install inkscape).

Install via the software center

enter image description here 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 Mouse 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.

Glorfindel
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dv3500ea
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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 06 '10 at 05:47
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    I love inkscape but don't agree that it is a good tool for editing screnshots. Just see how hard it is to add a simple arrow. – snowguy Jul 11 '12 at 15:24
  • I came here looking for an alternative to this approach. If Inkscape could open in under 1 second and recognized that In fact I just opened it for annotating a screencapture then that would be awesome. But it doesnt, and we are forced to jump thorough hoops and wait for it to load which is not good when you have 30 screenshots to do in rapid succession. – Mr. Developerdude Mar 23 '15 at 12:54
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    This is like killing flies with heavy artillery... – Fran Marzoa Jul 13 '17 at 15:39
  • I don't agree with @snowguy for my particular use case. I just needed to censor some confidential information in an image with black boxes and that was incredibly easy to do. Took me all of 20 seconds from launching Inkscape for the first time in my life. I think it's a great tool for editing screenshots. – Alex Jan 23 '20 at 09:28
  • This isn't really a screenshot annotation tool. – Roel Van de Paar Nov 06 '20 at 22:55
  • This inevitably leads to the following question: "How to draw an arrow with Inkscape?" – Serge Stroobandt Jun 29 '21 at 10:39
9

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.

GnuPaint

enter image description here

Krita

enter image description here

Suhaib
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gamerchick02
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  • gpaint was the perfect recommendation for me, minimal small, deps and basic to quickly mark up a screenshot – Maks Sep 07 '14 at 05:55
  • @Maks: let's say you've added some text. How can you nudge it around to the desired position in the screenshot (e.g. to not obscure other elements of the image)? – Dan Dascalescu Nov 01 '16 at 00:47
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    For anyone looking, Gnu Paint does not have an undo function... rendering it pretty useless – Ben Winding Jun 29 '18 at 01:59
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    gpaint is really nice. a couple levels of undo would really rock though. – simgineer Apr 12 '19 at 01:01
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On Ubuntu (or Linux Mint), try Kolourpaint. It's easy to use and has the features you describe.

enter image description here

Install via the software center

Community
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kupitt
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    ABSOLUTELY THE BEST ANSWER - sorry about the caps .. but I think its worth it. I found most other app to be buggy or bloated. This one is solid, does only what it needs to, and works perfectly with the Open With feature in Screenshot. Also its a small install. Krita is very bloated .. install was over 300MB, this is just 67MB. OP did not ask for screen-shotting feature .. I cannot fathom why flameshot is an answer unless its just a shameless plug. Ksnip and gnupaint aren't available for other flavors of Ubuntu (I'm on Xubuntu) – Michael M Mar 14 '19 at 19:20
  • Just one question... why instead of icons do I see text for each tool e.g. "Selection (Free-Form)" instead of the icon in the upper left of the group of icons? – Michael Aug 16 '21 at 16:03
  • Agreed, this worked best for me as well. – thomas.cloud Nov 08 '22 at 17:43
  • Simple to install, straightforward to use!! – Beni Bogosel Jan 25 '23 at 14:09
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I use LibreOffice impress https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/impress/ for annotations.

Just copy paste the image into the slide and add all the shapes and text which will serve as annotations. Then export to any of many available formats, like JPEG, PDF, etc.

Annotating with Impress keeps "annotations" as a separate layer allowing you to edit them at any time. On the other hand, if you annotate with, say, Shutter editing tool, once you saved the image with the annotations, you cannot undo the changes (you'll need to re-annotate the entire image from the initial state or use eraser tool to make corrections to existing annotations).

rlib
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    Although It is not obvious to think at presentation software for this task, this is indeed a very good suggestion. – Cie6ohpa Apr 16 '20 at 06:43
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    Seems pretty useless if one cannot edit the annotations afterwards. An additional issue is the aspect ratio and size of the slide. – Serge Stroobandt Jun 28 '21 at 12:07
  • @SergeStroobandt I believe @ rlib was explaining that other software — example provided: Shutter — have the disadvantage of not being able to modify annotations after closing the file. I feel it was mentioned only to contrast Impress' advantage in this regard. – Levente Aug 08 '22 at 01:58
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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.

Glorfindel
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W_Whalley
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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 07 '10 at 09:25
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    I have tried the arrow plugin, it's hard to use. I can't preview the arrow shape. I had to click the arrow menu item for each arrow line. Better then none, though. – Lenik May 23 '12 at 06:43
  • I also have used the arrow plugin. Not a good solution. It only does straight arrows and if you do some long arrows and some short arrows the long arrows head gets too big and looks strange next to a shorter arrow. – snowguy Jul 11 '12 at 15:25
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    Gimp is a bitmap editor. Simple vector-like operations, let alone adding captions or arrows, are just not what Gimp was designed for. Use the right tool for the job. – Dan Dascalescu Nov 01 '16 at 00:46
3

Xournal++ is the tool for freehand note taking or annotating pdf files, or anything you cut and paste in your document(text, graphics). I use Xournal++ in combination with a stylus for true free hand input as my goto tool when giving lectures online. This allows me to use any reference material as a background such as pdf documents or images and add annotations in real time while explaining the subject at hand.

Install using snap, more installation options here.

sudo snap install xournalpp

Here is an example screenshot from Xournal++ website

Xournalpp demo

Archisman Panigrahi
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elomage
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2

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
Curious Apprentice
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2

I recommend the "Awesome Screenshot" extension, You can easily add there text, simple arrows and other shapes.

Google Chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome-screenshot-screen/nlipoenfbbikpbjkfpfillcgkoblgpmj

Firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-screenshot-capture-

Opera

https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/awesome-screenshot-capture-annotate/

Michal Przybylowicz
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1

No one is talking about Image Magick. It is the simplest and the fastest app with one of the goals of is to make annotations.

It can be installed by sudo apt install imagemagick and launch the GUI from the search activity (dash). Here is the screenshot.

Example of annotation with ImageMagick

sugab
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    OMG, I have annotated an image with Imagemagick, opened from, and saved back to the disk! But the user experience, the user experience was shocking. OMG. I mean it works, but, holy moly, it's like from the 1960's. To illustrate through text editors, almost as if trying to use nano, where my normal UX expectation is Libreoffice... I mean, if you are stuck on a spaceship with only Imagemagick installed, it will be a blessing, because it does the job indeed. But as soon as you are back to Earth, you would be looking for something more smooth... – Levente Aug 08 '22 at 02:09
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You can take a look here, u'll find a lot of funny chrome extensions:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search-extensions/screenshot?hl=en-US

And this articile talks about some others:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/top-web-annotation-and-markup-tools/

hadibou
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    Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference (ie. post examples of the Chrome Extensions) – Oyibo Dec 31 '12 at 17:47
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You can use Pixtick. Web tool, no installation required and free. http://www.pixtick.com

D Bri
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