When it comes to image editing, there is only one program that is regarded as being industry worthy, Adobe’s Photoshop. That said, there are many alternatives that are not as well recognized that offer just about every commonly used feature in Photoshop.
Even better yet, some of these programs are 100 percent free, a far cry from the full price of Photoshop that most consumers consider to be absolutely absurd.
The GIMP
The best known (relatively speaking) free Photoshop alternative out there is called GIMP, which stands for The GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is available for practically any Operating System, from Windows to Linux.
The biggest problem with default GIMP is the fact that its interface is extremely different from Photoshop. Granted, if someone is new to photo editing it’s not particularly relevant, but many people looking for an alternative have used Photoshop in the past.
Even if the default version of GIMP doesn’t have the best interface, its open source nature means that other people have made some alternatives. One of these is called GimpShop, which duplicates the interface of Photoshop.
This UI allows for access all of GIMP’s features through an easy to use interface.
Paint.NET
For people even more picky about their interfaces, there’s a piece of software called Paint.NET. Sadly, this program is Windows only, but out of the many different Photoshop alternatives, this one has the most similar interface.
Just like GIMP, it is completely open source with an extremely large user base that allows for support even if the program were to stop getting regular updates.
A more basic option
There are some people that just need basic photo editing, and Adobe offers those people a very basic version of Photoshop called Photoshop Express. That said, when I call it basic, that might be a bit of an overstatement.
Photoshop Express is web-based and does not really do all that much even compared to the most basic of third-party photo editing software.