Which free image editing software programs are the best?

If having the best quality possible isn’t a priority for you, free image editing software is a good al­tern­at­ive to Photoshop and other photo editors. Here you can find a com­par­is­on of some of the best free image editing solutions.

What should photo editing software be able to do?

The range of features is the main and most important dif­fer­ence when it comes to dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between paid photo editing software and programs that are free of charge. The fact that freeware products usually have fewer editing options is not ne­ces­sar­ily a dis­ad­vant­age. Amateur pho­to­graph­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, often stand to benefit from the sim­pli­city of a free tool, while still being able to get a good result. However, free photo editing software should def­in­itely offer the following func­tion­al­ity:

• Simple cor­rec­tion of sharpness, colour, and exposure
• Cropping and rotating
• Lossless scaling when possible
• Isolation of specific elements and removal of back­ground or unwanted elements
• Cus­tom­isa­tion with filters and effects
• Ability to work on several layers
• Support for different image formats

What are the best free photo editors?

Overview of the best free image editing software

In the following sections you’ll find in­form­a­tion on some of the best picture editing software that is free. The com­par­is­on table sum­mar­ises the most important sim­il­ar­it­ies and dif­fer­ences between the desktop and web ap­plic­a­tions.

Paint.NET (Windows)

Ori­gin­ally a small student project at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­sity, Paint.NET is now among the best photo editing software in the freeware sector. The photo editing software was released in 2004 under a free MIT license and is now dis­trib­uted under a pro­pri­et­ary license. The basic framework of the ap­plic­a­tion is the Microsoft .NET framework, which is auto­mat­ic­ally added during in­stall­a­tion. Since the framework only runs on Windows, Paint.NET is not available for other platforms.

This Microsoft Paint al­tern­at­ive is developed con­tinu­ally, making it suitable for more demanding tasks. This means you can work on multiple layers with parallel pro­cessing of various projects. You can easily move back and forth between your projects using tabs. Each tab has a small thumbnail, making it easy to navigate to your chosen project. Basic op­tim­isa­tion tools for bright­ness, sat­ur­a­tion, contrast and hue are included as well as a gradu­ation curve for tonal value cor­rec­tion and a tool for removing the red-eye effect. Paint.NET also provides the following features:

• Softener and sharpener
• 3D rotation and zoom effect
• Black and white filters and sepia filters
• Gradient generator
• Selection tool (Magic Wand)

While the standard scope of features is quite im­press­ive, there is also a lengthy plug-in directory Plug-in group in the Paint.NET forum. With this directory, you can enhance the func­tion­al­ity of the program and in­cor­por­ate effects or filters that are missing. In addition to numerous tools for the tool palette, you can also find ex­ten­sions that allow you to import and export ad­di­tion­al file formats (such as the Photoshop format .psd). Paint.NET records every step of your progress, which means you can undo changes at any time.

Pixlr Editor (Web, Windows, iOS, Android)

After a year in de­vel­op­ment, the Swedish developer Ola Sevandersson published his cloud-based image pro­cessing software Pixlr Editor. You don’t need to sign up to use the photo editing software, and it can be used free of charge with all common browsers. In addition to the web version, there are also apps for Android and iOS as well as a Windows desktop edition. A slimmed-down version named Pixlr Express is also available for smaller image op­tim­isa­tions.

Pixlr Editor is the best proof that even free online photo editing software can keep up with the es­tab­lished, paid versions. The visual display and the standard editing controls make it easy to forget that it is a web browser app – es­pe­cially when using the full-screen mode. The clear, intuitive, visually appealing menu bars and boxes are easily re­cog­nis­able from com­par­able programs, so ex­per­i­enced users and beginners alike will quickly feel com­fort­able using the program. The image editing software provides the following image cus­tom­isa­tion features:

• Softener and sharpener
• Burn corrector
• Red-eye remover
• Gradation curves
• Automatic tonal cor­rec­tion

In addition to the versatile selection of cor­rec­tion tools, Pixlr Editor also offers numerous filters for altering photos and graphics. You can blur them, pixelate them, transform them into reliefs or apply a sepia or warm tone to images. There are plenty of cus­tom­isa­tion options available through­out the entire editing process.

A few aspects of Pixlr Editor make it clear, however, that you are using a free photo editing software program. For example, you can only export three edited photos or images per day. The app also has ad­vert­ise­ments, which you can close by clicking on them. However, these re­stric­tions are removed in the paid premium editions. In addition to other benefits, these editions also come with credits for various AI features in the Pixlr Suite.

GIMP (Windows, macOS, Linux)

In 1998, the first official release of the GNU Image Ma­nip­u­la­tion Program appeared in version 1.0, better known as GIMP. With the graphics library Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) as its found­a­tion, GIMP has become a com­pet­it­ive all-in-one solution for image op­tim­isa­tion and editing. Ori­gin­ally designed for GNU/Linux, the program now runs on all popular Windows and MacOS systems.

Like most open-source ap­plic­a­tions, GIMP is modular, so it can be expanded at any time. In addition, control elements can be organised and turned on and off as desired. In terms of func­tion­al­ity, GIMP is in no way inferior to other popular photo editing software. For example, the following filters and effects are available for unlimited use:

• Soft drawing (e.g. Pixels, motion blur)
• En­hance­ments (e.g. red-eye removal, blurring edges)
• Light and shadow effects (e.g. glitter, lens reflex)
• Artistic changes (e.g. cartoon, oil painting effects)
• Borders and effects (e.g. coffee stains, rounded edges)
• An­im­a­tions (e.g. shading, waves)

Touch-ups, such as colour dis­tri­bu­tion, contrast, and bright­ness can be adjusted with GIMP in just a few clicks. There are also tools for trimming, scaling and rotating images, as well as tools for editing in­di­vidu­al elements. Con­sid­er­ing the large variety of export formats available, one might find it hard to believe that this image editing software is free. GIMP offers a wide range of options including typical image formats (such as .jpg, .gif or .bmp), archive formats (like .gz or .bz2) and web formats (like .html or .xhtml).

Krita (Windows, macOS, Linux)

The open-source ap­plic­a­tion Krita is the result of a long-standing de­vel­op­ment process. The first version of Krita based on the Qt library was finally released in 2004 as part of the KOffice office software. In the recent past, KDE de­velopers have focused on tools for drawing and turning the program into one of the best open-source solutions for car­toon­ists, il­lus­trat­ors and concept artists. And this is without neg­lect­ing classic image editing.

Krita does not just attach im­port­ance to useful tools like brush sta­bil­isers and a large selection of brush types, but also offers a modern design to provide artists with the best platform for their work process. Tool spe­cific­a­tions can be adapted to the user’s own pref­er­ences using a drag and drop function in the settings menu. The im­press­ive selection of rework, filter and trans­form­a­tion tools is a testament to the fact that Krita is a first-class, free photo editing software program. Among other things, the ap­plic­a­tion contains the following editing features:

• Bright­ness/contrast curve
• Burn mode
• Colour balance
• Blur
• Sharpen
• Edge detection
• Oil painting

The mask feature allows you to apply effects to the various image layers of a project. There are also options for cropping, mirroring or scaling images to a new size. You can also document the steps you take during a project. This feature may need to be activated as a dockable dialog in some pre­con­figured layouts. With this feature, you can jump back a few steps at any time in order to undo changes.

Adobe Express (Web, iOS, Android)

With Adobe Express, Adobe offers free photo editing software as a web ap­plic­a­tion and as an app for iOS and Android. You can download the app in each of the app stores.

The simple tool offers various functions for quick and easy editing of image and video material. For this reason, Adobe Express is the perfect solution for creating reels and videos for TikTok and similar platforms, flyers, resumés, banners or logos. You can easily work in a team thanks to various col­lab­or­a­tion features such as the comments feature. The free picture editing software offers the following ad­di­tion­al features:

• Ef­fort­less ability to combine video clips, graphics, an­im­a­tions and music via drag and drop
• Generate text effects and images based on a de­scrip­tion (gen­er­at­ive AI from Adobe Firefly)
• Access to thousands of pro­fes­sion­ally designed templates as well as photos, videos and music (Adobe Stock; mostly fee-based)
• Syn­chron­isa­tion with other Adobe services

This free image editing software is very intuitive and has a well-struc­tured interface plays. To use the program, you need an Adobe account, which you can create for free. However, if you want to edit your images with Adobe Express on a larger scale, you’ll need the paid Premium Edition.

Raw­Therapee (Windows, macOS, Linux)

Raw Therapee Raw­Therapee was developed by Gábor Horváth and has been licensed under the GNU GPL license (version 3) since 2010. The photo editing software is open source and free so it can be used and modified without re­stric­tion. The program has a version of the con­ver­sion software dcraw in­teg­rated into it, which makes it possible to import raw data images (RAW data) from digital cameras and edit them. Raw­Therapee is also com­pat­ible with JPEG, PGN and TIFF, making it possible to also work with these image formats.

It is clear that a lot of de­vel­op­ment work has gone into Raw­Therapee. The various menus and quick-start bars allow you to edit imported images down to the smallest detail. Since RAW files can be very large, the queue provides an ongoing con­ver­sion process that does not interfere with the project you’re working on. Multiple images can be edited at the same time with the program. Due to the com­par­at­ively high system load, however, this should not be done with older computers. Raw­Therapee handles each step of the process non-de­struct­ively so that the images retain their best quality. In addition, all steps are stored in order so you can jump back at any time during the editing process. Raw­Therapee includes features like:

• White balance
• Ad­just­ment of sat­ur­a­tion, contrast and bright­ness
• Exposure com­pens­a­tion
• Sharpener
• Colour filtering
• RGB tone curves for maximum control of colours and exposure

Raw­Therapee is, un­doubtedly, one of the best photo editing software programs for RAW files on the open-source and freeware market. Users are provided with everything necessary to improve and edit their photos. Since you can per­son­al­ise and save your dashboard settings, it is easy to optimise numerous images with the same settings.