Software
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We recommended the following tools for creating artwork. They are all free software (free as in speech) and can be obtained by everyone at virtually no cost without any licensing-hassle. This simplifies sharing files and working together.
Promoting free software is one of the goals of Ubuntu and to do so, you should use free software yourself wherever you can.
GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) should be installed by default and accessible via Applications > Graphics > GIMP Image Editor. It is a full-featured raster graphics editor, comparable to Adobe Photoshop. http://www.gimp.org
Imagemagick
This is an amazingly powerful toolset. It is command line driven, but you will soon learn that you can do things with the toolset that you cannot do with anything else. For those of you out there who know about pixel bit depth limitations, Imagemagick let's you work at a plethora of depths including colourspaces and such. It can also render SVG and a very large file assortment. It is wonderful for creating, altering, and adjusting files.
Complete documentation is available at http://www.imagemagick.org
pngcrush
pngcrush is a command-line utility that optimizes Portable Network Graphics (PNG). http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/
Inkscape
Inkscape is a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editor. You can also use it to export raster type images. http://www.inkscape.org
Scribus
Scribus is a QT-based desktop publishing program (DTP). Its awesome, and features the best PDF support this side of the free world. http://www.scribus.net
Wiki Scripts
Two useful scripts to deal with images for this wiki.