The best Photoshop al­tern­at­ives

Photoshop is without doubt the most complete photo editing programme, and its re­cog­nis­able branding means that it’s con­sidered the first stop for anyone looking to touch up their photos and images. In fact, ‘to photoshop’ has since become a common verb used to describe any digital editing of images – re­gard­less of whether the ‘pho­toshop­ping’ was actually carried out on Photoshop or not. So if you’re looking to photoshop your images using a good Photoshop al­tern­at­ive, here are a list of some of the top com­pet­it­ors who still offer the functions you can’t do without.

The GNU Image Ma­nip­u­la­tion Program, known as GIMP for short, is an open source ap­plic­a­tion that can be used for editing photos and images. GIMP is, of course, com­pat­ible with Windows and MacOS, but unlike Photoshop, GIMP also works with Linux. All necessary files for in­stall­a­tion can be found on the producer’s website gimp.org. Thanks to the free software code and the plugin system, GIMP is an ap­plic­a­tion without limits – which has led to a constant increase in the range of functions over the years. If you’re using the software as a beginner, you won’t find any lim­it­a­tions to GIMP compared to Photoshop, and you’ll also be able to access a wide range of user forums and tutorials. All the essential functions for photo editing can be found through the various toolbars, dialogue windows, and menus; you can also customize the interface to suit your needs and re­quire­ments. The per­form­ance spectrum for GIMP is more than sat­is­fact­ory – es­pe­cially con­sid­er­ing the fact that this image pro­cessing software is a free al­tern­at­ive to Photoshop. You can access tools for automatic or manual cor­rec­tion, numerous filters and frames, and many more. GIMP can also be used to rotate and crop images/photos as desired, adjust colour and contrast, or add effects, like blur or sepia. And don’t worry if you go wrong – the ‘undo’ function allows you to return to previous versions of the file instantly. For more complex tasks, users have the option to work with multiple layers. But one dif­fer­ence between GIMP and Photoshop is that the open source image editing software is de­struct­ive: The original doesn’t remain as a back­ground level as it does in Photoshop – instead, it’s a direct component of the editing process. The dis­ad­vant­age then, is that each working step will mean a sig­ni­fic­antly higher loss of pixels than on Adobe’s software, and that lower levels of the image editing process will be less no­tice­able in the final result as more levels are added. GIMP is also known to crash – and doesn’t react bril­liantly to these crashes. Indeed, one thing the programme lacks is an in­ter­me­di­ate memory cache function. But a constant problem that’s plagued previous GIMP versions, the maximum colour depth of 8 bits per colour channel, should be a thing of the past with the latest GIMP version: Now, all GIMP designs are now supported with 32 bit.

The freeware (pre­vi­ously open source) software Paint.NET was ori­gin­ally pro­grammed by students and has since been developed by its current owners Microsoft. To use the latest version of Paint.NET, you’ll need the Windows 7 operating system – un­for­tu­nately the photo editing software isn’t com­pat­ible with other systems like macOS or Linux. The menus are inspired by Photoshop, but have been adapted for clarity and usability purposes. The list of tools on the left-hand side includes many famous tools, like lasso, brush, geometric objects, or the magic wand. All in all, there are only a few less than Adobe Photoshop offers. Paint.NET offers a diverse range of options for editing images and photos: cropping, colour and contrast changes, and many special effects are readily available. There are also more than 32 different filters available for quick fixes like elim­in­at­ing red eye or trans­form­ing a standard photo into a mag­ni­fi­cent oil painting. Ac­ci­dent­al changes are collected in versions as a history and can be easily undone with the ‘undo’ function. And unlike Photoshop, this software history isn’t limited to the last 1000 changes – it stores unlimited versions of your edits. Paint.NET also allows you to edit images in different levels, but, like GIMP, the program is de­struct­ive, meaning that every change alters the original image. Edited files can be exported in 8 different formats: PDN, BMP, PNG, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, TGA, and DDS – the only key file type missing is PDF. One downside is the tool portfolio, par­tic­u­larly in com­par­is­on to GIMP or Pixlr Editor. The basic in­stall­a­tion of Paint.NET only offers a modest selection of tools and effects. But thanks to the active, pro­gram­ing-friendly community, this basic package can be extended with many plugins. Some of these offer useful effects, while others enable the opening of other file types, like Photoshop files (PSD). There’s even a CMYK filter plugin. The freeware, and all available ex­ten­sions, are available on the official homepage getpaint.net for download.

One practical tool for managing, viewing, and pro­cessing digital photos is Pho­to­scape. This graphics programme ties with GIMP for the most popular free al­tern­at­ive to Photoshop, and is most commonly used by amateur pho­to­graph­ers. Its sim­pli­city of use and a solid range of functions for private and semi-pro­fes­sion­al users are its winning functions. Pho­to­scape offers numerous basic functions to help you edit and retouch photos. You can crop and reshape images, add different effects, paste other objects in, and correct bright­ness, contrast, and colour. There’s also a useful function that allows you to crop, rename, or correct several photos at once with batch pro­cessing. Creating posters, collages, or animated GIFs is quite straight­for­ward, too. Pho­to­scape allows you to convert RAW files to JPEG, and also supports RAM and PNG formats.  The various print layouts for portraits, business cards, passport photos, and more, are also practical and easy to use.

The Pho­to­scape project team have made their tool available to download for free, financing the de­vel­op­ment through free donations. The small and stream­lined free version is available for macOS and Windows. Ad­mit­tedly, Pho­to­scape isn’t the quickest tool on the market, and pro­fes­sion­al users will quickly realise they’ve maxed-out the limits of what they can achieve with the programme. Ad­di­tion­ally, while the interface is clear and easy to navigate, the present­a­tion isn’t exactly modern and in­nov­at­ive. But for day-to-day use, this simple image pro­cessing software is a good option and an at­tract­ive al­tern­at­ive to Adobe Photoshop for private users.

The website for Pixlr offers two tools for different ap­plic­a­tion purposes: Pixlr Editor and Pixlr Express. Both tools are available as web apps and desktop versions (for Windows and macOS), as well as mobile apps for iOS and Android. The web version allows quick, web-based edits of images – without in­stalling any software or even re­gis­ter­ing. You can simply upload an image into the browser and edit it directly from there. Pixlr’s main focus is its online service, which is tailored to users who plan on using their new edits online. The tool auto­mat­ic­ally prints processed images at a res­ol­u­tion of 96 dpi – the ideal size for image material optimised for online display.

Pixlr Express enables you to create quick but varied image edits. The tool is easy to use and offers a great selection of effects and tools to help you create stunning overlays, frames, and many other features. But the drawback is that you can only save your files in JPEG format.

If you’re looking to do more advanced edits and require a greater range of functions, then the Pixlr Editor goes a step further, and might be a better match. Along with the standard filters and editing options, like brushes, selection tools, and cor­rec­tion tools, the Pixlr Editor offers almost everything that Photoshop lovers desire: Re­touch­ing images, working in layers, using gradient curves, sep­ar­at­ing images, cor­rect­ing colour (both for the image and in tonally) – no problem. A total of more than 25 pro­fes­sion­al image pro­cessing features are available on the editor.

But there are of course limits to web tools. The standard res­ol­u­tion offered isn’t ideal for everyone, and you can’t work in a CMYK colour space. When it comes to formats, you can choose between JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, and Pixlr’s own PXD format.

The Pixlr Editor isn’t a fully blown, like-for-like Photoshop al­tern­at­ive, but it’s certainly a good image editing programme that can be par­tic­u­larly useful for hobbyists or beginners. There are also many good tutorials and help pages online to help you to get to grips with the software quickly and easily.

If you want to get an idea of what you can achieve with Pixlr, there are endless examples on the web page ‘Made with Pixlr’.

PicMonkey is a purely web-based tool. And just like Pixlr, that means that neither in­stall­a­tion nor re­gis­tra­tion are required for use. PicMonkey isn’t really a pro­fes­sion­al al­tern­at­ive to Photoshop, but it’s certainly a good re­place­ment for anyone who wants to play around with editing and get creative with filters and effects. Users can take advantage of a huge selection of pre­defined filters, the para­met­ers of which are usually cus­tom­iz­able. But the free basic version is un­for­tu­nately quite limited in its range of functions. All the important basic functions are there, like cropping, size ad­just­ment, colour cor­rec­tion, and more. But the options for re­touch­ing are no­tice­ably re­stric­ted compared to the paid version, with many of the key effects, overlays, and frames missing from the portfolio. One benefit of PicMonkey is that you get the option of many image settings in the browser tool – a feature that isn’t possible in Pixlr Express, for example. But, while you can define the res­ol­u­tion and size of your image, you only have the choice of three different quality settings. The per­form­ance of the PicMonkey tool isn’t 100% con­vin­cing, with glitches here and there delaying overall user ex­per­i­ence. But to counter this, PicMonkey’s photo editor does score pos­it­ively with its many effects and textures available, par­tic­u­larly in its fee-based format. The special touch-up tools are a highlight, with enjoyable extras, like adding realistic beards to faces and more. In addition to the editing and touch-up functions, users can create their own designs with the help of different templates, and create collages as well. PicMonkey is available as a web app and as a mobile app for iOS and Android.