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Photogenics doesn't even try to compete with GIMP for image processing, but it is much better than GIMP for original composition. GIMP absolutely sucks if you are trying to draw a picture from scratch (that's why it's "image manipulation program")

Photogenics used in conjunction with Gimp on Linux is pretty good...

The linux port of RealSoft (very cool raytracer) is supposedly to be commercially released soon. See realsoft.

Old Amiga people may recognise Realsoft as the makers of Real3D, an amiga raytacer that excelled at solid modelling and keyframe animation - it's especially good at glasses, liquids and crystals, since the light beams are modelled going through the whole material, rather than just surface effects, so you get real-looking stuff like caustics, working magnifying lenses, etc...

The new Realsoft version looks very, very cool...

For 2D static work, photogenics has been available for some time - it's really best for orignal composition, rather than image processing, and is, once again, a modernised version of an old amiga application. GIMP (and photoshop) both suck for orignal 2D work, IMHO. (then again, they both started out as "image manipulation" tools rather than bitmap-painting packages, and I did learn Amiga paint tools first...).

I agree that the state of 2D animation on linux isn't great - although, at least, we now have a decent lossless animation file format that (a) is open and (b) doesn't suck, in the form of the MNG superset of PNG - see libmng

Check out Photogenics which is also out in beta. Story here.

I`m told its pretty good at drawing :) I have some pictures in my gallery that might give you some good examples. Thanks, Paul Nolan