this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13484687

Looking for a good photoshop alternate

I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t anything any suggestions?

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[–] Dagamant 35 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It really depends on which features you are looking for. If you just want a solid editor with layers and plugins then gimp is pretty good. You can also try Krita for something a little less cumbersome.

Unfortunately most of the really nice editors are closed source and only mac/windows

[–] Eldritch 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Krita is heavily oriented for digital painting. But it is a very solid editor too. The interface took some time to get used to. Though I like it.

But absolutely, good is subjective. It really depends on your needs. If you're looking to edit spicy memes anything could work. If you're looking for non destructive workflow GIMP and krita are starting to implement that. And if you're looking for traditional publishing specific support, good CMYK, gamut, etc. Not so much to my knowledge? If you just want familiarish.... Gimp these days can imitate the classic Photoshop interface okay.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Krita has CMYK, and very good non-destructive editing these days. It's my preferred photo editor, including for the occasional magazine ad work I do. It also has great support for PS files, including smart layers, etc, plus it has layer effects, masking, filter layers, GPU accelerated canvas, and G'MIC support covers a lot of the fancier pbotoshop stuff like content-aware fill. IMO, for the workflow and interface alone, it's leagues ahead of G***.

[–] Eldritch 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I was unaware of the CMYK support. So sounds like maybe apart from gamut tools etc. It's getting fairly close these days which is good to hear. I've generally just been using it for drawing and painting with a little bit of editing. Though I still feel more comfortable editing in Gimp at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yea, it really is very good. I'm not sure what you mean by gamut tools, but there are out of gamut warnings, gamut masks, histograms, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Generally, I'll do RAW editing in something like Darktable, and then do actual retouching work in Krita.

[–] RayOfSunlight 21 points 7 months ago

If you want to do Photo Manipulation, GIMP is your best option.

If you wanna do digital painting, Krita is for you.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

First choice GIMP. Then, Digikam has an image editor that provides a number of tools. Not as detailed and sophisticated as GIMP but does most things needed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I think Digikam is closer to Lightroom than to Photoshop

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Krita does the job for 90% of the edits I ever do.

[–] Substance_P 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

What a coincidence, I was looking at the same thing today. I kept seeing recommendations for Affinity Photo, apparently it has a wide range of features for both Windows and macOS users. It's got PSD file support, RAW support, masking, layering, retouching, blemish removal, curving, and a comprehensive set of 16-bit filters.

It's around $50 I think but you own the license forever.

EDIT : I just noticed that this is the Open Source community so I just wanted to mention that Affinity is clearly not that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'll vouch for Affinity. Runs pretty well in Wine, too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

what? since when?

last time i checked getting it to run with wine was a major hassle next to impossible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well, Bottles anyway, and Affinity Photo v1.10.6.1665.

Here's the custom recipe I use (with caffe-8.21): https://privatebin.net/?5f0ccc4d96c9f386#8MRRLF6WkZ8zjPWDFucuwsiCGSg9mdSVwcF3YqfqFarU

Some minor rendering issues, but perfectly usable.

[–] Dagamant 2 points 7 months ago

They are absolute garbage with wine. I think the only version that worked was the very first release.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Photopea -- online, but can be used as a PWA. One of the best!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you're really used to photoshop and don't mind using a webapp I recommend photopea.com

The UI is super easy to pick up if you're used to photoshop, and for my purposes it has all the functionality photoshop has. Only downside is it's a webapp with no local client available as far as I know.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You right, I missed the community this was posted in.

[–] FrostKing 5 points 7 months ago

Unless you're incredibly deep into technical functions, Krita is 100% the way to go. Gimp is not horrible, but I have a bias against it, because i found it ridiculously unintuitive and hard to learn to use

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If you want to try some hacking:

Install GIMP beta from Flathub-beta (see my repo list which contains it as an example

And try to add the theme PhotoGimp

As Gimp 3.0 is nearly done, Photogimp likely needs an update as its made for GTK2.

GIMP 3 introduces some necessary features that are a base requirement for graphics design, nondestructive filters and color profiles (if you want to print)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

gimp

/thread

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

When it comes to Photoshop, there is alternative, and there is good. Unfortunately a truly good alternative doesn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The closest is photopea. Not gimp, I'm afraid.

[–] LazaroFilm 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Pixelmator is nice if you want a nice interface. Not all functionalities are here but it’s nicer to look at than Gimp.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It's not FOSS and only available for macOS

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

GIMP is the best you're gonna get unfortunately.

If you just want something that's free as in price, honestly the best thing (in terms of functionality only) is pirated photoshop natively on windows. I've found PS is kinda crap on Wine.

Photopea is proprietary so at that point you may as well just pirate photoshop, at least then you're getting the real thing.

[–] RayOfSunlight 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "unfortunately"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

As in it's unfortunate that there isn't a foss photo editor better than gimp (which us quite clunky and awkward to use)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

The lastest beta has great UI and feature tho

[–] RayOfSunlight -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Dude what the hell??? GIMP has a lot of time in development, also, if you really have a problem with the UI, why don't you report that issue to the Devs instead of whining about it in here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Why are you being this defensive? I didn't say GIMP was bad, I like it and I use it regularly. I just don't think it's better than Photoshop is all. I'm sure the devs are actively trying to improve the UI too. This seems like a massive overreaction