Photo/Image Editing Tools For Free: Alternatives To Photoshop

Photo Editing Program

Photo-editing is a part of daily life of every person now-a-days so doing some photo editing should obviously be free but it isn't if your demands are high. Like if you chase professionalism so what to do, get a 10$ subscription for Photoshop or use the boring paint tool and hope for a miracle.

Well if that's the question you are facing then the answer is write here. So here is a list of 4 different "FREE & OPEN SOURCE" photo-editing tools each one has a forte. So let's get started.

GIMP

Super popular and among the top contenders of photo-editing just like Photoshop, has ample lot of features and just as many plugins, though some are now outdated and need to be re-written. But being open-source and free even you guys can write a plugin for it for your needs, though it has got a complex code-base. Currently the latest release is 2.8.20, beta version of 2.9.x is already out. And the work being currently done on 2.10 for various feature increment. The 3.0 version will be the version to be the port of GIMP to GTK 3+ and will support non-destructive editing features like Smart Objects in Photoshop.

To download GIMP Goto: www.gimp.org

The interface of GIMP is rather boring and the default feature set is very limiting so to take Gimp to it's limits just download and install a darker theme and GIMP Extensions Pack check out my post on "Gimp Into Free Photoshop Alternative".

My Version Of GIMP

GIMP has numerous awesome features if use the right extensions in the right way. At the moment there is not a single thing I can't do with GIMP. So download it even if you are a pro even if it's just for testing. But it's to be remembered that it's an raster graphics editor like Photoshop and lacks advanced features for professional photographers. 

I will be making tutorials on GIMP as often as possible.  

Krita

Another awesome application which allows basic photo-editing functions and has loads of features for creating hand drawn illustrations. It's got a place in this list of basic photo-editing functions like transform tool and such. 

It seriously lacks in photo-editing options as compared to GIMP and is more for illustration tool than a photo-editor, but has an awesome transform which can scale, skew, rotate and pivot-shift too. It's transform tools is simply better than GIMP's in terms of simplicity and control. It also supports basic editing effects.
And has a better UI as well.

To download Krita Goto: www.krita.org

My Krita Setup

If you want to do illustrations as well as photo-editing this is the tools for you. Remember it's also a raster graphics editor like GIMP and Photoshop. And if you want to learn more about it just go to the GDQuest channel on YouTube. 

Though I will making some tutorials on Krita in the near future.

Digikam

It's as awesome digital asset manager and has loads of image editing effects, tools and presets. It's for people who like to bulk edit and store pics(somewhat like me!) and want the ease of presets and don't want any of the hassle with super difficult interface and stuff. 

To download Digikam Goto: www.digikam.org

Digikam's UI + Image Editor

It the best free digital asset manager around so if you have loads of images on your system just give it a download and try it. It's just too simple to require a tutorial. :)

RawTherapee

Probably the most complex and advanced photo-editor, meant for use by professional photographers and in technical terms can be called a raw image processing program. It has got more controls and sliders than I will ever have time to explain. So don't hope for a tutorial here but I will guide to it's documentation site.

To download RawTherapee Goto: www.rawtherapee.com

For the documentation head to: www.rawpedia.rawtherapee.com

Me Editing a Stock Image in RawTherapee

CONCLUSION

Finally time for the conclusion, just as I stated above use GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop, Krita for illustrations, Digikam for quick Photo-Editing and RawTherapee if you are a serious photographer and are willing to spend the time to learn such a complex tool. 

It's good to see so many options for people who want to do photo-editing and stuff for free. So go check them out and have fun. 

--Makeitdevs signing out.