Photoshop is a photo editing powerhouse. Beyond the professionals who use the program, the word itself has become popular and is often used as a verb, as in, “Can you Photoshop this to make it look better?” More often than not, when flipping through the pages of a magazine, the images you see were once opened in Photoshop.
But while Photoshop may be the industry standard, it’s not the only photo editor around. Photoshop remains superior for many of the most advanced tasks, but programs like Affinity Photo, GIMP, and Paint Shop Pro can offer lower prices and simpler user interfaces and still complete many tasks.
While there are many Photoshop alternatives out there, the programs that can truly stand up to the name “Photoshop alternatives” aren’t basic web-based tools and include things like layers and masking. Here are the best Photoshop alternatives for the photographers looking to do more than crop and resize an image.
Affinity Photo
This is hands down the best alternative to Photoshop out there right now. It makes for an easy transition since it uses many of the same keystroke shortcuts and provides many of the same editing features. However, one of the best things about Affinity is pricing. Make a one-time payment and the software is yours to use no subscriptions and no unexpected changes in price.
You'll find the basic tools like red-eye removal, crop, resize, drawing tools, selection, and more, but you'll also find lens distortion correction, a cloning stamp, color adjustment, blur, brushes, layer masks, and several other advanced editing tools. More importantly, it also features batch processing so you can make the same adjustment to several images at once. You can even use this software to create HDR images or stitch multiple images together into a Panorama. One of the coolest things this software offers is the Inpainting Brush Tool, which operates much like Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill. You'll be able to remove unwanted objects from your photos and fill the space believably so it looks like nothing was ever removed.
GIMP
One of the best things about this free, community-created software is its versatility. You can install a number of plugins to get the tools you want and it gives you access to basic tools like crop, color picker, eraser, selection, and text tools. You'll also be able to use some more advanced features like a clone tool, layers, smudge, blur, sharpen, and pen tools. There are even a limited number of automatic presets that you can use to adjust the look of your images.
Professionals will notice that the editing effects often aren't as good as what you'd find in a paid-for photo editor. Color adjustments might seem a little washed out or brightness changes might seem too harsh. That being said, it still provides decent results and is a great option for home projects. Professionals can get by using it but they might have to turn to other software to get a certain look from their work. In addition, the interface and functionality of the software can be a bit clunky at times. The user interface has all the tools you need, but they aren't organized in the best fashion, so it might be hard to find what you're looking for.
Corel Paint Shop Pro
Corel has been around for years and has created an impressive database of tutorials and support features to help you learn the software. Beginners and frequent editors alike will appreciate them, along with all the automatic editing tools. You'll find over 100 preset filters that each allow you to give a unique, artistic effect to your images. You can also manually adjust your images to get them looking exactly how you want them.
The interface is clean and organized into two tabs: Manage and Edit. In the Edit tab, you'll find the basic editing tools such as selection, crop, resize, and shape, as well as advanced tools. This software includes touch up tools to help remove blemishes and unwanted elements from your photos. This program works in layers so you can make changes to one layer without affecting the rest. You won't find many vector tools in this software compared to others, which limits potential projects. This program cannot create animated GIFS, so if that's something you like to do you might need a different program.
The Manage tab allows you to search your computer for images. Once you've found what you want to use, organize photos by rating, categories, date, and location. There's even a facial recognition feature, but as is common with many photo editing programs, it often makes mistakes. You'll need to manually tag every photo and make sure it didn't just tag a random part of a background as a face.
As you can see, there are plenty of alternatives to Adobe Photoshop on the market. When deciding which programs to place on this list, we considered convenience, price, the editing tools offered, and any special features. You'll need to figure out exactly what it is you're looking for in a photo editor in order to know which one to buy.
If you simply want something similar to Photoshop, we highly recommend using Affinity Photo. It's very similar to the aforementioned program and produces professional-level results. If you mainly want a photo editor that allows you to draw and paint, you should use Clip Studio Paint Pro. Since its focus is painting and drawing, it has better lines and brush tools than Photoshop and will help you create exactly what you envision. If you are interested in learning more about Photography or Videography, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’d love to hear from you. You can reach The Burnette Agency by email at info@theburnetteagency.com or give us a call at 404-850-2081.
