Photoshop Alternatives
Adobe Photoshop serves as a professional raster graphics editor for Windows and macOS, handling advanced image editing, retouching, and digital art. Users praise its extensive feature set for graphics and design, though many complain about high pricing compared to other editors.
GIMP tops the rankings as the leading Photoshop alternative, offering broad image-editing and retouching tools completely free and open-source. Many users switch to GIMP specifically to escape Photoshop's cloud licensing and subscription model. Affinity Photo ranks second with its polished interface and one-time purchase model, repeatedly highlighted as a cost advantage over subscription pricing. Luminar Neo brings AI tools like GenErase and GenExpand plus focus stacking and HDR merging for photographer-centric workflows.
Krita ranks third, focusing on digital painting with advanced brush control and animation support for artists. The alternatives landscape splits between pro photo editors and art-first painting apps, with Photopea standing out as a free, install-free option with PSD support and a familiar interface.
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For open source transparency, GIMP and Krita lead with community-driven development and no proprietary licensing restrictions. Linux users have native options in GIMP, Krita, and MyPaint without relying on Windows or macOS-only tools. Windows-only picks include Paint.NET and Corel PaintShop Pro for desktop editing with layers, effects, and selection tools.
Web-based editors like Photopea, Pixlr, and Sumo Paint work in browsers when you can't install software on school or locked-down computers. Users avoiding subscriptions can choose Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for predictable one-time licensing. For PSD workflows, Photopea, Affinity Photo, and Pixelmator open Photoshop-format documents to maintain collaboration compatibility. iPad workflows benefit from Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, and Pixlr for editing on tablets rather than desktop-only setups.
Alternatives list
PhotoPlus is the free, feature-restricted image editing software by Serif that enables you to fix and enhance your digital photos; paint and blend with brushes; and export you photos for print, email, and the web.
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Polybrush is a new 3D editor created specifically for artists. It very useful for 3D concept art, fast modeling and sculpting. The main difference in approach to the creation of 3D models as a drawing. It was created by artist for artists.
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Love photo editing? Multi Layer is a full featured photo editor able to edit and compose images in multiple layers. It supports selection tool (manual and magic wand tool) to selective editing brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and RGB color levels.
Cost / License
- Freemium
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Android
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CinePaint is a deep paint application that edits EXR, DPX, 16-bit TIFF, JPEG, PNG and many other types of image files. CinePaint is available as a native application for Linux, Mac OS X, and BSD.
PhotoGlory is simple and intuitive photo restoration software. Enhance your retro pics with 100 built-in effects and use many other effective tools.
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Livebrush is a drawing application. It employs an easy-to-use brush tool that reacts to your gestures through the use of velocity and other motion controls. By combining simple motion controls with customizable brush styles, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create...
Cost / License
- Free
- Proprietary
Application type
Alerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Adobe AIR
iPiccy is an online photo editor with tons of powerful features to make your images beautiful. It takes commercial quality editing tools and wraps them in a simple and intuitive interface that makes editing as fast as possible, exposing the features you need only when you need...
PaintStar is a versatile digital image processing software suitable for such tasks as retouching of photographs, composing and authoring images, image morphing, screen capture, and displaying image thumbnail in Windows Explorer context menu.
Photopainter is both a natural-media painting software and an image processing system at the same time.
Cost / License
- Paid
- Proprietary
Application types
Alerts
- Discontinued
Platforms
- Windows
Picture Window Pro is a powerful image editing tool designed for serious photographers with demanding creative and quality standards.
Fhotoroom HDR is an easy to use powerful image editor that can take your JPEG's, Digital Camera RAW and High Dynamic Range photos and help you fix exposure, color, and distortion problems or quickly and easily make your photos stunning.
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