19 Free Alternatives to Photoshop

Photoshop is a powerful application used by graphic designers and professional photographers for image editing. It is also very expensive, forcing people to look for more affordable, if not free alternatives.

1. Paint.net comes with a host of photo editing tools and is considered to be one of the fastest free photo editors for Windows and is excellent for crops and quick edits, and its free.

2. GIMP — stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program — comes with a good amount of tools, and tasks such as advanced image filtering as well as other tasks that you’d only expect from Photoshop are to be found with GIMP. Available for Linux, Windows and OS X.

3. Pixlr — one of the best online image editors, Pixlr will meet all your browser-based editing needs. You’ll discover amazing effects with the Filter menu.

4. Adobe Photoshop Express — for use in your browser or Android, Windows Phone or iOS. You can adjust pics as you like and there is a Touch-Up tool that allows you to fix-up your pictures.

5. PicMonkey — lots of different tools to use and Instagram-style effects. It works in your browser so you can access it from anywhere.

6. Seashore is an open source image editor based on the technology of GIMP. It has support for some other graphics file formats, including full support for the likes of JPEG and GIF. Less features than GIMP but includes among others plug in filters, gradient and transparency effects and anti aliased brushes.

7. Inkscape — open-source vector graphics editor using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) as the native format.

8. ChocoFlop — an image editor for Mac OS X, based on CoreImage technology.

9. Xara Xtreme for Linux — general purpose graphics program for Linux, FreeBSD and OS-X.

10. Krita — an image processor for KOffice suited to your image creation and editing needs.

11. Mac Preview — image preview tool to perform basic image editing.

12. PhotoFiltre — easy or more advanced adjustments to an image as well as being able to apply many filters on it.

13. CinePaint — image retouching tool that provides higher color fidelity than your regular painting tools.

14. PhotoPlus — photo editing software enabling you to enhance digital photos and also create bitmap graphics and web animations.

15. Canva — image editing app with many awesome design aspects which includes stock photographs and fonts.

16. Acorn — a fast Mac image editor with tools like custom brushes and Photoshop format. It can work directly with RAW files.

17. Pixelmator — features like multi-monitor support and compressed memory features in OS X Mavericks.

18. SumoPaint — web-based image editing tool with features such as brushes, gradients and Symmetry tool.

19. Affinity Photo — This happens to be a new application from Serif which works with Raw files, offers CMYK — 4-color separation as well as support for the most sought after photo formats, together with PSD.

Photoshop offers a host of features but its price puts it out of reach. With these free alternatives to Photoshop, you’ll soon forget the name ever existed.