Fix Shutter Edit Button Greyed Out In Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

Edit -> for a better solution, please see: New Shutter PPA For Ubuntu 19.10, 19.04 And 18.04 | Linux Mint 19.x

The problem


Shutter Screenshot Tool edit disabled

Shutter Screenshot Tool has an issue in Ubuntu 18.04, which prevents its image editing features to work. This means features such as blurring text, cropping the image, adding lines, arrows, text, and so on, do not work by default.

Shutter Drawing Tool

On a first look, when you select an image in Shutter running in Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver), you'll notice that the "Edit" button is greyed out (disabled). The image "Edit" context menu item is disabled as well.

In previous Ubuntu versions, you could simply install the libgoo-canvas-perl package to get this to work. But this doesn't work in Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver, because that package was removed from the repositories.

The solution - working Edit button in Shutter under Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver



Update: I created a new Shutter PPA which includes all its dependencies, so the Edit button works so you can annotate images. The AppIndicator works as well, and you'll also find the gnome-web-photo dependency in the PPA, which allows Shutter to take full website screenshots. This is easier to use, and it works on Ubuntu 19.10, 19.04 and 18.04 / Linux Mint 19.x.

To re-enable the Shutter edit button (which opens the Shutter Drawing Tool) in Ubuntu 18.04 (and any Linux distribution based on it), you'll need to install the libgoo-canvas-perl package from Ubuntu 17.10, as well as all its dependencies (also from Ubuntu 17.10).

You can grab the deb manually from this page (make sure to also download its dependencies) or you can run the commands below, which will download libgoo-canvas-perl and its dependencies that aren't available in Ubuntu 18.04, save them in the libgoo-canvas-perl folder in your home directory, and install these deb files:

- 32bit:

mkdir ~/libgoo-canvas-perl && cd ~/libgoo-canvas-perl
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libg/libgoo-canvas-perl/libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_i386.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libe/libextutils-depends-perl/libextutils-depends-perl_0.405-1_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libe/libextutils-pkgconfig-perl/libextutils-pkgconfig-perl_1.15-1_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/goocanvas/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_i386.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/goocanvas/libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo apt install -f

- 64bit:

mkdir ~/libgoo-canvas-perl && cd ~/libgoo-canvas-perl
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libg/libgoo-canvas-perl/libgoo-canvas-perl_0.06-2ubuntu3_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libe/libextutils-depends-perl/libextutils-depends-perl_0.405-1_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libe/libextutils-pkgconfig-perl/libextutils-pkgconfig-perl_1.15-1_all.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/goocanvas/libgoocanvas3_1.0.0-1_amd64.deb
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/goocanvas/libgoocanvas-common_1.0.0-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo apt install -f

Once the debs are installed, exit Shutter and the next time you start it, the Edit button should work. You can now delete the libgoo-canvas-perl folder from your home directory.

On Debian Sid, you'll need Debports to be able to install libgoo-canvas-perl.

If you're running an older Ubuntu / Debian / Linux Mint version, simply install libgoo-canvas-perl from the repositories:

sudo apt install libgoo-canvas-perl