im not even sure if core animation can be put here comparing to an app that does certain thing.
leopard, I think, already has this CA stuff. I don't know if its a necessity to do what you described.
About PicLens for windows, ( sorry I missed your question, I was on my palm, not very convenient,

)
ionlygreat already answered below, I just repeat it, PicLens is available for windows and OSX, but not Linux..... sigh.
PS.Firefox's addons are mostly cross-platform, but still, Almost all of them support windows, slightly less support OSX, even slightly less support Linux. Quantitatively, on any platform, users have 2000+ choices...