Adobe Photoshop is one of the best digital photo editing tools out there, but it’s also highly expensive. Luckily, there are plenty of free (and even cheap) alternatives that work just as well.
Here are ten of the best Photoshop alternatives available for both Windows and Mac.
Luminar: well-known photo editing tool
Luminar is a well-known photo editing tool that provides various filters, brightness, contrast, and other basic tools. It’s free to use for both amateur and professional users. The professional version offers more features than the free version, such as being able to change the color space, using multiple images at a time, and saving projects.
The interface is very simple to use and it doesn’t require any previous photo editing experience. There are no complex settings to understand. Just select the effect you want to apply and click on the “Apply” button.
Luminar has a very large community of users and a great support system. The community is extremely active and helps each other with their projects.
The software is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It’s developed by Daniel Jilg, and the official website is luminar-photo-editing.com. The software is free
Affinity Photo: a powerful and affordable alternative to Photoshop
Do you sometimes wish you could quickly and easily improve your photography without paying a fortune? If the answer is yes, you’ll want to know this Photoshop alternative.
Affinity Photo is a professional photo editing software that offers a wide range of features and tools. Unlike Photoshop, Affinity Photo has a non-destructive editing environment that allows you to make changes to your photos without affecting the original image file. This software also offers a wide variety of adjustment layers and advanced features which give you complete control over the look and feel of your photos. In addition, Affinity Photo offers a wide range of brushes and retouching tools that allow you to create the perfect photo.
PhotoWorks: an intelligent photo editor for PC
PhotoWorks is a free image editor and cropping tool to help you improve your photos. Its simple to use interface makes it easy to create cuts, fixes, and adjustments to your images.
With a wide range of tools and features, PhotoWorks can also be used to remove people from photos, change the lightness or darkness of a picture, or even re-touching the highlights and shadows. You can now keep several versions of your photo in PhotoWorks at the same time, and you can share your creations via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace.
In addition, PhotoWorks is equipped with a range of export options, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP.
Photopea: Web-based alternative to Photoshop
How about to edit your photos online, using a web-based software with a strong focus on image processing and color correction? Developed by a startup of the same name, this tool is intended to be an all-in-one solution for digital painters. If you’re a photographer or graphic designer, you might want to test this. Although it doesn’t have all the features of the tools we’ve mentioned before, it can be a good option for simpler corrections that require agility. See: https://www.photopea.com/
GIMP: A free Photoshop alternative
The open source project Gimp is also worth considering. This free, easy-to-use software gives you advanced photo editing tools, nearly the same capability as Photoshop, with some added benefits of its own. GIMP also has a wide range of plugins that you can use to add extra features to the software.
Paint.NET: A Photoshop alternative with good features
Paint.NET is a free, open-source image editing software that resembles Adobe Photoshop. It has a fairly straightforward interface and does the job well enough if you are looking for an image editor to perform basic operations like cropping, red-eye removal, blurring, and sharpening. The program is designed for Windows users and is not very cross-platform.
The main advantage of Paint.NET over other, similar programs is the large number of built-in effects. You can recover lost details, remove distractions, and create clear images using various “filters” in just a few clicks. The disadvantage is that the interface is rather simple and the program does not offer many features.
Corel PaintShop Pro: A cheaper alternative to Photoshop with more features
Corel PaintShop Pro is a high-quality photo enhancement software that is easy to use. With a price tag significantly lower than Photoshop, CPP has many good features to photographers. One of these is destructive editing, which allows you to cut, paste, and rearrange objects in a photo without affecting the original image. This is a tremendous feature for fine-tuning your edits without having to go back and forth between various files. Another great feature is the localized contrast and color balance. While you can enhance your images using the global contrast and color balance, doing so in localized modes lets you keep the details in areas of the image that are important to you.
Pixlr Free Online Photo Editing
Pixlr is a free online photo editor, which means that you can experiment with angles, lighting, and backgrounds without having to purchase any additional software. The app offers standard features such as adjusting brightness, contrast, and exposure as well as adding filters and highlights. Furthermore, it allows you to crop and straighten your photos as well as create square or seamless images. For those looking for more features, there is the Professional version, which is similar to Photoshop Elements but with fewer features.
Darktable (open-source photo editing application)
Darktable is a free, cross-platform photo editing software application developed with the goal of being a simple and intuitive alternative to commercial image processing software. The application runs on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Linux and has a web-based interface. The user interface was designed to be simple and easy to use with a maximum of transparency. The editing features include luminance, color balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, grain, vignette, temperature, filter, brightness, Wallaby and Frechet adjustments. The batch processing features include modify, combine, convert and annihilate commands. Trusted by million of users around the world, Darktable is now used by many prominent visual effects companies like Industrial Light & Magic, DreamWorks, Digital Domain and others.
Inpixio Photo Studio
Inpixio’s Photo Studio is a free application that lets you do some basic image editing and cropping. The interface is clean and uncluttered, making it easy to use. You can adjust your image brightness, contrast, exposure and reduce the noise in your photo. If you want to make more detailed edits, such as fixing the white balance or reducing the color temperature, you will need to purchase the full version of the app.
Conclusion
There are so many free alternatives to Photoshop plus several paid options with lower prices and lots of features.
If you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop, check out this list of the top 10 free and paid options. With so many great options available, you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your needs.