XnRetro: Vintage Photo Effects on the Linux Desktop

Productivity Sauce

While there is no lack of image processing and photo retouching tools for the Linux desktop, your choices are somewhat limited when it comes to applying vintage effects to photos. digiKam allows you to emulate vintage effects to some degree, and there are a handful of GIMP plugins that can simulate a few popular retro looks. But if you are looking for a dedicated application which offers a wide range of vintage effects and tools in one easy to use package, then you might want to give XnRetro a try. While this application is not released as open source, it runs smoothly on Linux, and requires no installation. Grab the latest release of the application from the project's website, unpack the downloaded archive, and run XnRetro to launch the application.

As you would expect, XnRetro is not particularly difficult to use. All tools in the application are organized into several groups: Retro (color effects), Light (light effects like bokeh and light leaks), Vignette, and Frame. When you open a photo in XnRetro, you can see previews of different effects applied to the photo in the thumbnail bar. The application offers 20 effects to choose from, which is plenty enough for most users. In addition to the vintage filters, XnRetro features a handful of basic editing tools, including Brightness, Contrast, Exposure, and Noise. So you can use the application as a quick-and-dirty photo editing solution. XnRetro also lets you upload the processed photo directly to popular photo sharing services like Flickr, Imgur, Tumblr, and TwitPic, but I had limited succes with making this functionality work on my machine.