Photoshop listed the dictionary as a verb—to Photoshop—in 1992, but Adobe’s iconic photo editor is far from being the only application of this kind available. There are many outstanding alternatives to Photoshop, and some of the best ones do not cost anything at all. In this post, we introduce the top 7 best free photo editors to help you get started on your creative journey even if you’re on a tight budget and can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a single application.
Are Free Photo Editors Deserving My Time?
Online learning platforms, YouTube, and graphic design blog sites are filled with Photoshop tutorials to such a point that it might seem that finding out any other photo editor is a wild-goose chase. Is it?
Numerous complimentary photo editors today have all the features most newbies and average users will ever need. Most of them have a workflow similar to Photoshop, making it reasonably easy to shift somewhere down the road.
The only fact that free photo editors do not have is the vast community developed throughout Photoshop. Instead of finding hundreds of tutorials describing how to crop an image or adjust brightness, you might be able to see just a handful, and they may not be as professional as you’d like.
So, are complimentary photo editors worth your time? We believe they are! You may want to go the extra mile to find an excellent tutorial. However, that’s a little price to spend on saving many dollars.
BTW, free Photoshop plugin virtual photographer & virtual studio by optic verve Labs URL: http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ is shutdown.
7 Best Free Photo Editors in 2024
Here we suggest some of the best free photo editors.
1. GIMP
GIMP is the most famous Photoshop option in the world. The first version of GIMP was launched in 1996, and the photo editor hasn’t stopped developing since then. Today, GIMP is offered on every main desktop OS, and it’s utilized by many expert graphic designers, photographers, and illustrators to produce stunning works of art. Third-party plugins can highly customize GIMP, and it even features a framework for scripted image manipulation.
If there’s something about GIMP that should have a criticism, it has to be its interface. GIMP is far from user-friendly, and tasks that take simply a couple of clicks in Photoshop typically need far more effort in GIMP. The bright side is that GIMP’s developers understand that the user interface could utilize some polishing, and they’re working hard trying to make it better.
How to Download GIMP
1. Visit https://www.gimp.org/downloads/.
2. Select your operating system.
3. Download GIMP directly or via BitTorrent.
2. InkScape
GIMP is a raster graphics editor that allows users to develop and modify images interactively on the computer screen and save them in numerous raster formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF. Inkscape, on another note, is a vector graphics editor, permitting users to compose and edit vector graphics images interactively on a computer and save them in one of many popular vector graphics formats, such as EPS, PDF, WMF, SVG, or VML.
Illustrators typically utilize vector graphics editors. Still, they have their place in a photo editing workflow, specifically when it pertains to producing advanced visual effects and artwork.
How to Download Inkscape
1. Visit https://inkscape.org/en/.
2. Place your mouse over the Download button in the top menu and select Download.
3. Select your platform.
4. Select your architecture.
5. Choose an installation format.
6. Wait for the Download to start automatically.
3. Paint.NET
Microsoft Paint is exceptional at its basic image creation and manipulation; however, its functionality is far too limited to help significant photo editing. If you have ever believed that it would be terrific if a real photo editor with user interfaces comparable to Microsoft Paint, we have good news for you: Paint.NET is that photo editor.
The only problem is that Paint.NET works only on Windows. You can either download it free from its official site (see the instructions listed below) or buy it on the Windows Shop and support its developers.
How to Download Paint.NET
1. Go to https://www.getpaint.net/
2. Click the free download link on the right.
3. Press on the top download button to download Paint.NET from dotPDN.
4. Krita
Krita is a professional, complimentary painting program made by artists who want to see everyone’s economic art tools. Despite its irresistible cost of absolutely no dollars, Krita has an intuitive user interface, includes three various methods to smooth and stabilize your brush strokes, and makes it simple to create smooth textures and patterns, to highlight some of its functions.
How to Download Krita
1. Visit https://krita.org/en/.
2. Press the large “Download Krita Now!” button in the middle of the site.
3. Select the version for your OS and download it to your computer.
5. Pinta
We have already heard that Microsoft has given up on Microsoft Paint. The precious application won’t become part of future versions of Windows. Instead, it will be available just from the Microsoft Store. If you do not wait on Microsoft to pull Microsoft Paint from under your feet, you can download Pinta, a free, open-source photo editor, right now. Pinta is readily available for Linux, Mac, Windows, and * BSD, and you can download it by following the guidelines.
How to Download Pinta
1. Visit https://pinta-project.com/pintaproject/pinta/.
2. Press the “Download.”
3. Select the version for your OS and download it to your computer.
6. Darktable
It is an open-source photography workflow app and raw developer for practically every OS you can think of. If you recognize with Adobe Lightroom, you will feel right in your home in Darktable. Thanks to the highly personalized architecture of Darktable, you can add modules for all sorts of image processing, from the extremely simple to the most advanced, such as a module for the simulation of human night vision. Darktable is entirely non-destructive, which means that any adjustments you make to your photos are not applied to the original images, just to cached image buffers.
How to Download Darktable
1. Visit https://www.darktable.org/.
2. Select “install” from the top menu.
3. Select your operating system.
4. Click and Download the latest version of Darktable for your operating system.
7. RawTherapee
Like Darktable, RawTherapee a cross-platform raw image processing program that positions itself as an option to Adobe Lightroom and other non-destructive photo editors. RawTherapee is remarkably flexible, providing support for almost all DSLRs and even some medium format bodies, and its multi-threaded algorithms make it exceptionally useful even on relatively underpowered systems. Under the hood of RawTherapee is a 96-bit floating-point processing engine that allows you to get the most information and least artifacts from your raw photos thanks to contemporary and traditional demosaicing algorithms and advanced color management.
How to Download RawTherapee
1. Visit https://rawtherapee.com/.
2. Press “downloads” from the top menu.
3. Select the version for your OS and download it to your computer.
