Top 5 Free Photoshop Alternatives

Photoshop is the one and only phenomena software when it comes to editing photos, adding special effects or for any professional designing project. Even though Photoshop is costly and even though it requires a lot of practise and learning to get expertise in it, I would say there are no possible alternatives to Photoshop that can match its power.

Wait. Why did I say so even though the title says it’s about 5 Photoshop alternatives?

Well, it was a kind of personal disclaimer. Now let’s come to main part. Here, I am going to write about 5 of the best free photo editing software that can replace Photoshop if you can’t afford it or if you feel it’s just too difficult to understand. So let’s start with the alternatives.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a totally free of cost powerful software that is cross-platform i.e. it is available for not only Windows but also Linux and OS X. It is also power packed with a large set of tools and functions which make me admit that GIMP is one of the real competitors of Photoshop.

I used GIMP for the first time when a few years ago I used Linux as my OS. GIMP is easier to understand compared to Photoshop and has basically the same set of functions though Photoshop may be more powerful and complex. But GIMP is enough to do some serious; as the name says; image manipulation.

Paint.net is another well known free image editing software that is available only for Windows users. It is also a bit less complex than GIMP and definitely easier and simpler than Photoshop but at the same time it’s much easier to understand the functions of Paint.net than even GIMP.

What makes Inkscape enter this top 5 list of Photoshop alternatives is its capacity to deal with vector graphics. Yes Inkscape is capable of implementing vector graphics which makes it stand out compared to the other free alternatives. And yes, it’s also free.

Pixlr is one of the few web apps which are strong enough to support basic as well as intermediate editing features. Though its nothing as advanced to GIMP or Paint.net but it’s still an easy to use software that allows not only the most basic editing features like rotate, crop, resizing but also a lot of advanced features that make it stand out compared to other web apps.

Pixia is a Windows only software that has originated in Japan. Pixia is the English version of a Japanese image editing software. Once again, Pixia isn’t all advanced, its a simple tool with a lot of basic editing features which are pretty cool for a free tool.

Frankly speaking, Adobe has really done a lot of professional work with Photoshop which really makes it worth the cost. But if you are looking for a free Photoshop alternative and you are looking for something powerful you can go with GIMP or Paint.net. If you are looking for something that is easy to handle and still has a lot of features packed into it, there are the other 3 from this post.

Now, it’s your turn to comment about any software that you have used before. Or how’s your experience with it? Just don’t talk about MS Paint here! Do comment and share your words.