26 Free Adobe Photoshop Similar and Alternative Software

Updated on August 1st, 2018 by Quertime Team in Software

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most powerful image editing programs around. However not everyone is willing to pay for it especially if all one need to do is basic image editing job. That could be the reasons why you can see there are so many Photoshop similar programs out there for free download. These digital image softwares can perform most of the basic Photoshop jobs such as image manipulating, transforming, adding filters and effects as well as file formats converting.

So, which is the best Photoshop alternative software? In today’s post, we’ve compiled a list of 26 awesome image editing softwares you can use for free, making your design jobs more fun and easy!

Gimp
The GIMP is the GNU image manipulation program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The Gimp works on many operating systems, in many languages.

Photo! Editor
With Photo! Editor, you can remove red eye instantly, enhance the color of the image, make funny caricatures, add astonishing lighting effects, straighten, resample and crop images.

Paint.net
Paint.net is a free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Photoplus
With PhotoPlus, you can edit, enhance, and organise your entire image collection. Remove red eye, restore old photos, add amazing effects and everything in between. You can even perform advanced tasks like editing Raw files, HDR image merging and more.

Photoscape
Photoscape is a fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos. Some of the editing features include resizing, brightness, color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, and much more.

Inkscape
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor that supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.

Pixia
Pixia is a popular Japanese painting and retouching software. It supports mask, layer and many other editing functions. You can use your own customized brush tips and even use an image file as a brush tip to create unique effects.

Seashore
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 around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format.

CinePaint
CinePaint is a deep paint image retouching tool that supports higher color fidelity than ordinary painting tools. CinePaint opens high fidelity image file formats such as DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and OpenEXR, and conventional formats like JPEG and PNG.

MAGIX Xtreme Photo Designer
MAGIX Xtreme Photo Designer is a powerful yet easy to use application that allows you to edit your photos quickly and precisely. This program offers a comprehensive set of tools that enables you to edit your pictures and assists in transforming your photo ideas into reality.

Splashup
Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.

Zoner Photo Studio
Zoner Photo Studio is an image viewer and image organizer software. It features a variety of editing functions including 16 bits per color channel.

Photo Pos Lite
Despite Photo Pos Lite contains only a part of Photo Pos Pro features it is still a powerful Image and Computer Graphics editor. Using the Lite version you can edit, enhance and manipulate your pictures easily. You can edit and optimize your pictures, print it, resize it, convert it to another format and much more.

Gimpshop
Gimpshop is essentially Gimp with some cosmetic changes. The Gimp’s menu structure and naming conventions are a constant source of frustration for users accustomed to Photoshop.

PhotoFiltre
PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve.

Artweaver
Artweaver lets you paint creatively with the help of a huge range of painting tools. You can create sketches from photos or just experiment with colors. For professional users, Artweaver offers layers, group layers and support for the PSD file format.

RawTherapee
RawTherapee is a free RAW converter and digital photo processing software. All changes can be applied and batch processed at a convenient time.

VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor
VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor is a versatile image editor with an intuitive interface and a wide variety of features. This powerful application is user friendly, offering simple image editing, high productivity and easy customization.

Helicon Filter
Helicon Filter is a complete photo editing solution for the digital photographer. Its easy and intuitive interface, live preview feature, and contextual help ensure an easy start in photo editing for beginners. The program is built as step by step workflow guiding you through all post processing stages of photo editing.

Image Analyzer
Image Analyzer is advanced image editing, enhancement and analysis software. The program contains both most image enhancement features found in conventional image editors plus a number of advanced features not even available in professional photo suites.

Pinta
Pinta is a free, open source drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET. Its goal is to provide users with a simple yet powerful way to draw and manipulate images on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Photobie
Photobie has all general photo editing and painting features. It is a screen capture tool for you to do screen capture and editing in one place. It is also a digital scrapbooking tool that allows you to apply embellishment, masking and templating easily and efficiently.

Evan’s Image Editor
Evan’s Image Editor (EIE) is a free image editor that allows for the editing and creation of animated or still images. It contains several GPU-powered image modifiers that take advantage of modern graphics hardware, giving you an instant preview of the effect while you adjust parameters.

ChocoFlop
ChocoFlop is an image and photo editing application for Mac OS X. It supports a wide range of formats, offers many filters and blending modes and does with many geometry and painting tools.

Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria is a fun, lightweight image editing application. The main focus is to apply effects to images, along with the basic editing that might be required after a sub-par shoot.

PaintStar
PaintStar is a versatile digital image processing software suitable for such tasks as retouching of photographs, composing and authoring images, image morphing, screen capture, and displaying image thumbnail in Windows Explorer context menu.