This open-source photo editor has been in the game for quite a long time: its initial release was 24 years ago, in 1996. GIMP is considered by many to be one of the best free Photoshop alternatives out there.

See also: What can I use instead of Adobe? It may not have the fancy AI tools of Photoshop, but instead, it offers a simple, easy to understand interface with virtually no learning curve, making it perfect for beginners to create eye-catching graphic designs. Photographers and creative professionals often use the free version of Canva to create graphics quickly and easily – think of it as a website to Photoshop pictures for free. That’s not something you’ll find native to Adobe Photoshop. It’s an online tool, which does have its pros and cons – one big plus is that you don’t need a powerful computer to use it (and won’t run into the dreaded Photoshop ‘scratch disk full’ error), but you’ll obviously need an Internet connection to get started.Ĭanva has a huge number of free icons, badges, design grids, stickers and photo frames that look up-to-date and very fresh. So how does it stack up as a Photoshop alternative? Well, it doesn’t have all the advanced retouching features of Photoshop, but there are enough one-click tools to help you edit photos and create custom graphics. The free online storage is particularly impressive, considering that with Photoshop you need to pay for online storage as part of the Creative Cloud.Ĭanva is the best choice when it comes to combining images with text, which is quite often needed when you create content for Instagram and other social media platforms – all the specific sizes are already available as templates, ready for you to use. With the free version of Canva, you can have up to 10 team members, access to more than 8,000 templates to choose from and edit, and a generous 1GB storage for photos and assets. It also has a more advanced pro version which costs $9.95 when paid annually and $12.95 if it’s paid on a monthly basis. Millions of people consider it the best substitute for Photoshop – it’s actually a website like Photoshop, but free (there’s no software to download). Canva is a simple, fun and feature-packed web-based design platform which allows you to create professional-looking content for all kinds of social media.

Gimp open source photoshop