10 Free Adobe Photoshop Alternatives for Windows, Linux and MacOS

Photoshop is the goto choice for professional, but cost puts it out of reach for amateurs and beginners. Here's some Photoshop Alternatives.

Despite the unfortunate name - GNU Image Manipulation Program - GIMP is one of the most capable free open-source photo editors available for Windows, OS X and Linux. It has some very powerful tools and plugins, but it could be more user-friendly than other offerings. Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.

Paint.net started life as a simple replacement for Microsoft Paint. Still, it has evolved with many new features, including an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and various valuable and powerful tools. It has since become one of the fastest free photo editors for Windows, with a capable feature set that stops just short of the professional tools.

If digital painting is your thing, then Krita is for you. Krita is a professional, free, and open-source painting program made by artists who want to see affordable art tools for everyone. It is ideal for producing concept art, texture and matte painters, illustrations and comics.

Pixlr is a cloud-based suite of Autodesk tools, including photo editors, a screen grabber browser extension, and a photo-sharing service. Pixlr allows you to work in layers, replace colour, transform objects, and more from your browser.

Photos are bundled with Apple's MacOS, and you can use it to sync and manage your photo collection with iPhones and iPads. The Photo app also has some basic image manipulation tools that allow you to apply filters and presets, adjust levels, crop and rotate images, and perform other enhancements.

Fotor is another cloud-based photo editor designed to bring powerful digital editing to you. It has all the basics and also many unique features. It has a huge range of filters, including AI photo effects, lomo, photo frames and tilt-shift effects.

Pinta is a free, open-source program for drawing and image editing. Its goal is to give users a simple yet powerful way to draw and manipulate images on Linux, Mac and Windows.

LazPaint is an image editor with layers and transparency. It supports the format OpenRaster so it can interoperate with MyPaint, Gimp and Krita. It provides advanced drawing functions in the Lazarus development environment.

It contains all the basic image enhancements and a set of filters that can be used to enhance your photos further.

Seashore is an open-source image editor for Mac OS X's Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based on the GIMP's technology and uses the same native file format.

However, unlike GIMP, Seashore aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products. Also, unlike GIMP, Seashore has an all-new Cocoa UI that will fit right in on Mac OS X.

Adobe Photoshop Express contains the most basic of Photoshop features, free of charge. You can use Photoshop Express in your browser or download the Windows 10, Android, iOS or Windows Phone app. The app lets you crop, rotate and resize pictures, adjust the usual variables like brightness and contrast, and remove red-eye. There's also a useful Touchup tool that lets you correct minor blemishes in your pictures. Common enhancements are included but limited to selected brush sizes. A limited set of filters and plugins are also included.