21 FREE & Paid Photoshop Alternatives

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21 Alternatives to Adobe Photoshop Free & Paid

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GIMP This open source free alternative to Photoshop works on pretty much any platform, and it’s perhaps the best free alternative to Photoshop out there. GIMP may not be quite as powerful as Photoshop, but when you compare the price tags, there’s no competition. There’s no doubt that Adobe Photoshop CS3 is probably the most popular and powerful image editing software on the market today. There are so many features packed into Photoshop that many people get overwhelmed at the very thought of Photoshop’s extensive photo editing power. However, if all you need to do is re-touch photos, create designs, or even design a website template, then there is life beyond Photoshop. They may not be as powerful, but they may just be the answer that you’re looking for.

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Seashore Inkscape This open source image editor is designed to be used exclusively on the Mac OS X operating system. For people who are looking for a very basic image editor for their Mac, Seashore may be a good choice because of its ease of use and small footprint. This open source application is a vector graphics editor that is a great alternative to any type of drawing program. Inkscape won’t replace Photoshop in terms of photo manipulation, but if you’re looking for a drawing program which uses SVG file format, then Inkscape may be the answer.

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Xara Xtreme ChocoFlop This is a complete alternative to Photoshop. Xara Xtreme also claims to be the world’s fastest graphics software. This software isn’t free, but it costs much less than Photoshop at about £70 for the basic version and about £200 for Xtreme Pro. ChocoFlop is a free image editor / drawing application for Mac users (Mac OS X 10.4 or higher). This application will remain free to download up until the developers finally develop a stable version of this software so now is the time to grab a copy.

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PhotoPlus CinePaint This amazing application can pretty much do it all, and best of all it’s entirely free to use. This full suite of software can be used to edit photos, create professional-looking documents, design websites, draw, and generate 3D effects from 2-dimensional objects. This powerful open source software is free to download, and it is one of the best available image retouching tools available which supports higher fidelity colour up to 32-bits, compared to GIMP’s 8-bit, which allows for a deeper colour range and better quality prints.

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Krita PhotoFiltre version 9.2.1 This application is part of the Koffice suite of software for Linux. It’s free to download. Krita is scriptable in Python and Ruby and offers a useful DCOP interface. Released in 2005, Krita received the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. This photo editing software supports layers, transparencies, red-eye removal, and various artistic special effects. The interface is easy to use and requires a small learning curve. PhotoFiltre is only available to Windows users, and it costs 29 euros to purchase a license after the initial 30 day trial period.

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Paint.net Picnik Paint is a “poor man’s Photoshop” and is one of the most popular Photoshop alternatives out there. It has support for layers, unlimited undos, a wide variety of special effects, and sports several brushes. Picnik is a free web-based photo editor which has quickly grown in popularity since it partnered with Flickr. It is extremely easy to use, it features lots of special effects, and it works on any platform because it runs within a web browser.

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Splashup FotoFlexer This is another popular web-based application, which works great as a photo editor, and integrates seamlessly with photo sharing websites such as Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, and many others. FotoFlexer is yet another web-based photo editing application. This free editor has a lot of cool features such as a morphing feature, a smart resizing option, support for layers, and a neat recolour hair feature, which quickly and easily changes hair colour within a photo.

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Pixelmator Corel PhotoPaint Pro Photo X2 This low-cost image editing app is fast becoming one of Photoshop’s biggest competitors. It’s only available for Mac OS X, and its interface is very intuitive with eye-pleasing graphics, easy to use controls making for a highly versatile UI. The extensive feature-set in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 includes but is not limited to Express Lab ultra-fast photo editing, an easy HDR conversion feature, easy watermarks, and a plethora of filters and special effects.

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Pixel Image Editor Photoline Pixel Image Editor has full support for pressure sensitive tablets, a must for any graphic designer. The interface is easy to use and navigate, and there’s an extensive amount of filters, brushes, and drawing tools available to use for editing or creating artwork. Photoline was created by a group of German software developers who set out to create a solid Photoshop alternative, and they did. It may not be quite as powerful or popular as Photoshop, but it’s certainly advanced enough for professional photo editing.

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Photo Pos Pro Faststone Imagine Viewer Photos Pos Pro is a lot like Photoshop in terms of functionality, but its interface is quite different. Novice photo editors should choose a less robust photo editing software as this one can get very complicated - much like Photoshop. FastStone Image Viewer is a free, basic image editing app that has been around since 2004. You won’t find many advanced features in this Windows-based tool, but it has just enough features to keep most amateur photographers happy.

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Capture NX 2 This image editing tool was created by Nikon and therefore works seamlessly with Nikon cameras, although anyone can use this application for retouching photos, resizing, applying filters, and much more. Capture NX 2 does a good job of balancing an advanced feature-set with an easy to use. Pixia This free software was originally created in Japan but is available in other languages including English. Pixia is an advanced paint program that works on a Windows-based operating system (ME, 2000, XP, Vista).