Editors' rating |
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FireAlpaca Specifications
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Manage and edit several images at the same time.
FireAlpaca is a free image editing and drawing tool that can hold its own against premium packages. It includes the essentials, such as layers, multiple image capability, and flexible tools, and is nicely organized. It's not a match for Photoshop but doesn't really try to be, nor is it optimized for digital snapshots. It's well suited for freehand drawing, though, especially with a digital pen, thanks to some interesting features.
We fired up FireAlpaca and opened a stock image from our Pictures library. We performed a range of operations on it, including cutting and pasting, drawing and shading, color changes, and merging layers. We could save our image as a JPEG, PNG, Bitmap, FireAlpaca document, and Photoshop document (PSD). The ability to open and save PSD files adds significantly to FireAlpaca's capabilities. FireAlpaca's tools work well, and we like the Brush Control, Color Picker, and other tools displayed in the tools menu to the left of the main view, though some of our favorites seem to be missing, such as the smudge tool. But the pen, pencil, airbrush, eraser, selection, Magic Wand, eyedropper, hand, bucket, and other tools had familiar controls and functions. FireAlpaca worked well with our Wacom tablet, too.