Linux Photoshop Alternatives 

"And I hope to talk to you again...... very soon." There's something very comforting about hearing that phrase on a Sunday afternoon. Weekend complete.

The great thing is that with free programs, you can have more than one, hopefully covering all the essentials.

GIMP has been my go to editor for a long time. It's good to know there are other options for where GIMP doesn't meet my needs. Thanks for the video!

Just me or was anybody else waiting for all the scores added up at the end? Lol. Another great video.

Photopea gets high praise from me, even though it doesn’t speak CMYK very well because it is the ONLY Photoshop alternative that works well on a Chromebook AND handles vectors.

Informative video sir..and the digital appearance of Mr scissors ✂ :)

This video prompting me to give krita a try. Always a pleasure to watch your videos. Bless you Chris.

I love how professional, well organized, and true knowledgeable you are, I was look for this type of video and I wanted a professional comparison to Photoshop alternative not someone who came and google it and made a video about it

My daughter finds Krita good for starting out with digital art, and it works well with her graphic tablet. Thanks as usual Chris for the interesting content.

I talk for everybody when I say we really need a Mr Scissors tshirt !!

Very well organized presentation. And the criteria make it easy to determine what type of use each is good for.

Remember that Photoshop format psd is a proprietary format and not an ISO specification standard format that is open or can be licence from Adobe. Therefor blaming Gimp and other editors to not support all psd features is not their problem, there is no none Adobe software that can reproduce all psd native features. This is good enough as it is a great revers engineering effort. Same goes for MS Office format.

As always with your videos, Chris, thank you so much for your effort and the wonderful content you present for our enjoyment.

You make Sundays better! Thanks for another great video.

Thanks for your work on the photo packages. I am a Linux Mint (v. 19) user and my work is in great majority screen-based. A long time ago, when I was a Windows user I had Photoshop but didn't have much call for its use. I struggled my way through GIMP when I transitioned to Linux nearly 10 years ago. I still learn something about its use virtually every time I have a project. From a more global perspective, I am also a Raspi user, for fun and my personal education, even though I am in my 70's. I have followed your channel for a considerable time and enjoy your videos without exception. I particularly liked all your Raspi overclocking and cooling videos. I tried several solutions. In fact, as I type this I have 4 Raspi running which I access through VNC. I appreciate your approach so please keep up the great work and much success to you in the future. I hope to hear from you very soon! (to steal your line!) Mr Scissors and Stanley the knife are great characters in your repertoire.

Good video, nice to see a comparison so you have a good idea which to use.

I stopped using gimp because the user interface was so confusing. Good to see they've made some big changes. I'll go have another look. Thank you

As usual a very informative video, don't expect anything else,thankyou.

i dont think i have ever used any sort of 'photoshopping' in my life but this video gets my like for the production and smooth transitions

Was great you used real world examples like creating graphics for youtube production, most hold that close to their chest but you don't have to, you know your stuff :) thanks for another great video

I think Photopea deserves at least one point for CMYK workflow due to its ability to load those documents. Certainly better than the app not supporting it at all.

I've been using gimp and inkscape for all my raster/vector graphics needs for years. Both are extremely good! I haven't used Photoshop since version 6.0 and I haven't missed it at all 😁. I've also found a big drawback to online photo editors is resolution control. For example, in Pixlr editor there's no way to increase the resolution above 72dpi. It's been a while since I used it so maybe it's been improved though. Cheers from Canada!

Useful information on photo editing thanks professor

Very interesting indeed! Thanks VM!!!

Excellent video as always.

Thanks for this informative overview. I'll give Krita a try on my Windows PC. I always missed CMYK with GIMP.

Another great video! Thanks for the comparison.

Quite impressed there's such a feature-packed browser-based imaging solution like Photopea. We tend to associate online editors with very basic stuff for absolute noobs. And of course, that's what it was some time ago. Wouldn't have guessed such a huge leap ahead has taken place in that kind of software if not for this video.

Excited about the orange pi 4, hope you get a board to review soon.

Very usefull video. Thanks a lots. I only knew about GIMP, but the other two alternatives were totally unknows for me.

Good revue. Having come from years of Photoshop, I can appreciate the hard work that was put in GIMP, Krita and Photopea. Sadly enough, Photoshop remains at the top of the heap for all that you mentioned and also, automated batch processing, on which I relied heavily. Cheers.

Thank again for another useful software, and that I already use GIMP, but I really like the Krita setup also, and can't wait to try out Krita? As well as your video about Krita to help me out faster to learn it.

Hello Chris. 👋🏻 Yes, they are great alternatives, I use all of them. But the greatest surprise was PhotoPea I discovered some time ago. Very pleasant surprise. I'm on a trip right now but nothing can stop me from enjoying EC videos. Not even local network/roaming problems. 😁👍🏻

Very good run-down. For me, native psd format is irrelevant, I only use gimps' default format. If I import from psd (rarely), I'm happy to put up with images in other formats that gimp does handle. Krita looks interesting, I've seen it but never used it. The online Protopea looks good too. Thanks for that Chris.

I'm gonna stay subscribed to your channel as long as you make videos about linux

This is the best computer channel on RU-vid.

Excellent thanks Chris! Shared 👍🌟

Great video. I’ve always been curious about Linux image manipulation programs.

Thanks for a very informative video. I have always understood GIMP to be a replacement for Photoshop, so was surprised that it lacked a couple of key features. Still a great program for image manipulation, of course.

Excellent video, thanks very much.

Not being able to install anything Adobe is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Thanks for the video.

Well done, thx for new information!

Cracking video....my daughter has started to manipulate her selfies and photos so this has been invaluable. Grade A as always

Very nice presentation!

Wait...WAIT?...We can edit Mr. Scissors in Linux now? :O

I can't think of a better way to rebel against Adobe's subscription model than to use Linux alternatives. For users like me, who only use graphics editing tools occasionally, these will get the job done without any major financial commitment. I understand those using PS for professional reasons though. Thanks for another great comparison video Chris.

Ooo I love pixlr for thumbnails. Super easy to use!

I used to do graphic design work in the 90's/early 2000's in the print industry and having seen all of the major players turn their products into a service rather than something you own outright is abusive. I'd rather try and relearn functions in alternative programs than have Adobe & Co tell me when I can use their program and how much I should grace their palm for it! I used to be a heavy Inkscape user for planning my own projects and then one day I moved over to it full stop. Now it's used to draw with or manipulate vector drawing that my daughter has drawn, it gets tidied up and then printed for colouring.

Thank you for the video. I'm definitely adding this to my Favorites to define what I need if I ever have to manipulate images. My current expertise is MS Paint. ;)

Great video. Agreed, being able to handle PSD files is crucial to migration.

Thank you for this video!

well explained loved it this video was very helpful

Thanks Chris. Another one I use in Linux is Photofiltre. It's a Windows program but installs and runs great through Wine. Doesn't do all you've covered but is a very good free image manipulation program.

You bring it to the point ...

I would appreciate a video which explains why CMYK is so important. I see why it is useful on the printer side, to decide how the black part of a color is mixed, but I don't get why it is important during design. I assume that most designers don't know the properties of the printer and the used ink. CMYK and RGB are just two different coordinate systems that describe points in the gamut. Both are able to express exactly the same points/colors. The only difference is, mathematically spoken, that RGB has a basis (distinct coordinates for each point) whereas CMYK has a generator set (coordinates of points are not distinct). Btw. thanks for the great video!

Gimp - 17 Krita - 22 Photopea - 20

Nicely done! Some new software to try out! I have use a few you showed today. But I am very interested in Photopea! I just tried it out on one of my Raspberry Pi 3 B plus. It appears to work ok but it does have a bit of lag. Next week I will try it on my Pi 4 + 4 and see how that works. Great content Chris. Thanks

Imho, if you have to prepare covers (including CMYK) for books, posters or books, it's better to use Scribus (available for Linux, Mac and Windows).

I'm old enough to remember a photoshop was a place to send film into and get pictures back good times.

On top of those five basic attributes, I would add the following. They aren't necessarily about function, but they set the usable tools apart from the amateur offerings. First is an intuitive organisation to the functions. So things are found easily and in logical places. Second is a wide collection of properly written plugins to extend functionality Possibly most important of all is good documentation. Not just descriptions of individual functions, but how to use them together to achieve the desired result. And finally a well thought out user interface. To make common actions easy and complex actions possible.

I can't imagine I would of ever got bored in one of your lectures. :-) good as always.

A few years ago now, I used Scribus, Inkscape, and GIMP to lay up a few books. Even then with the best functions, taking multiple applications created wasted time and space. The images of drawings which needed to be vector/traced (because 72dpi is high-end, yo!) , and the editing of digitised old photos. It was all possible since I started at one place rather than trying to match up with existing formats. Doing it again, I'd probably use Krita but would still use the text frame edits in Scribus.

nice review, and as you stated in other comments, going into details would take too much time (re. image manipulation). however, it might be interesting to also take system requirements and responsiveness into account e.g. in Gimp (last I used it anyway) manipulations were quite swift in preview mode but then would take quite some time to render once you hit 'apply' ... (on older hardware and w7 at the time ... then mostly used Irfanvieuw for minor adjustments and its ability to batch process )

Chris, just a great piece of work. THANKS. I only recently learned that Adobe was no longer "selling" Photoshop and Premiere, but only "renting" these two widely used software packages. I'm obviously not a power-user of either, but I guess that those people who are, and maybe even some casual users, were irritated by this development. Both packages were always high priced, but this 'never-ending' payment plan seems a little evil to me. Anyway, here's my question (or request:) I use Wondershare Filmora (not free) quite a bit as an alternative to Premiere and I'd like to see both a review and a comparison like this one to free (and/or cheap) Windows (and Linux) alternatives. I am not a power video editor, but I do a lot of simple editing chores. Filmora is ok, but, to me, has some serious faults. Again, THANKS so much for a very nice video.

I recived the notificatin while I am using Gimp on ubuntu 😅

Image manipulation category was really over simplified but I'm gunna trust your judgement because I wasn't aware of Photopea. Should come in handy thanks.

Photopea is also available as appimmage and runs fine in crostini.

Gimp Is a great alternative to Photoshop!! my preference is Linux Mint is great for beginners unlike the red hat vs 4 operating system it took me over 3 weeks to install it. I wouldn't say I was dumb like but a PhD would have been good to figure it out. 🤔😊

Hello Christopher. I again learned a lot. Image manipulation is my weakest point. I use the combination of pinta and gimp on Linux for my images. But I do not use text in it(can't change it easily). I then add my text on top in Kdenlive. But Kdenlive is very bad at this. It doesn't line up text well, so my text columns are never straight. With Photopea I could make seperate images and always add the text column I need for the following image so it would look a lot better. In windows I used paint together with paint.net. The same story there with text. I used to work with photoshop 20 years ago. But I find it has gotten a lot harder to find what you need. You need to invest a lot of time(and money) into it to have a fast workflow. CorelDraw was great too. Made tons of logos with it, and banners with my matrix printer. But it wouldn't hold up against modern software :) I finished my NVIDIA Jetson Nano review video this week. But I'm not so happy about it. Always many things I'd love to have shown. I should have shown more of the desktop use. So I'll make another separate video on that, and one about gaming on it. And one about machine learning. I am amazed about how well this board runs. Even only clocked to 1.43Ghz it performs great for most light desktop tasks. I did expect video playback to be better. Also still unable to record my USB3 camera in 1440p at 30fps. While it should be able to do a lot more. More research needed. I had to make the video since it was sponsored by Antratek, and I couldn't wait for much longer. Otherwise I'd wait until I found everything I wanted. Also ordered a 2nd big computer desk. That will double my work space and I'll be able to use a lot more boards at the same time. Should make me a lot more productive. Also again making new film lights. Now with 3W LED's with natural 4500K color(as the sun). I've made 1 panel and tried it in my jetson video. It is already better. But I need to make more, and find something to diffuse the light so the shadows would be softer. It's a learning curve :) But I like learning a lot... Thank you for all the great tips. Have a nice evening, greetings. NicoD

Thanks Chris for an excellent overview of Photoshop alternatives. Is there any chance of you assessing Adobe Lightroom alternatives either for Linux or other OS's - thanks again.

For me, the issues with Linux are printing compatibilities/bugs, and the buggy tendencies (and quirks) of GIMP v2.8, and Krita. I don't need the intense features, as i guess most don't either? Stability and consistency are everything - Linux Mint 19.2 is almost 'great', as is GIMP etc, but if i want to get things done, it's back to Windows XP/7/10, OSX10.x etc Sorry but it's true. Thanks for your videos EC!

Thanks sir

I'm one month late but I needed to say this. Happy new year first of all. Something not mentioned in the video is the ease of use. Recently I decided to try Ps. I came to a point where I wanted to resize and then crop an image. It was a nightmare. In GIMP I could do it easily in 2 steps. Plus, GIMP has G'MIC Qt. You should try it, if you haven't already.

Great video I've been wondering lately, since I don't use adobe suite and Microsoft office, if there's any alternative. Now I'm assured. Thank you

Gotta remember that Photpea. At work I sometimes have to work with graphics, but I don't want to use the old Photoshop CS2 which is kinda borked on modern Windows.

Text 5 out of 5? What about kerning, tracking, leading, open type features and other sophisticated typography? Also, are there any editors with light interfaces? Edit: Photopea has some light themes.

Whenever you upload a new video and I get notification. It always remind me of my dad. I miss him. God bless him. Rest in Peace 🙏 😇

If Steam were to sell windows software's too, Proton can be optimized to run majority of windows software's on Linux just like how windows games run on Linux via Proton/Steam Play.

I usually use photopea. It has been a real life saver.

Cool!

GIMP, as great as it is, cannot be considered a Photoshop replacement because it doesn’t do vectors at all and is not CMYK aware. GIMP never has been a PS replacement, it is just so good at image manipulation that people started making the comparison.

I mostly use Gimp for photo work and Krita for more creative stuff both are great.

With the introduction of Windows 10, I been checking into Linux more and more. I would be more than willing to make the switch if I was to be able to do what I do in Windows 10 with Linux, but you can not do it in a productive or efficient way. I wish more people would start making programs for Linux, not just free because I would be willing to pay for great programs. It's a wonder why we don't have more advanced programs for Linux since it's been around for so long.

Interesting video! I'm going to have to give Krita another look. I'm not sure how common table editing would be in Photoshop. Doing it in a bitmap editor feels like the wrong kind of program for that task, and there are surely other FOSS programs that would be perfect for the job. But I appreciate that info is in the video.

Did you test libreoffice draw? I'm not sure of it's psd format support.

While Photoshop is convenient and, dare I say it, it fits the typical Windows users needs, Linux has more specialised tools. There is a "Holy trinity" in GIMP, Inkscape and Scribus. Taking your book cover as an example, the graphics would be created in Inkscape and assembled into a final piece in Scribus - which fully supports CYMK workflow and readying for print. GIMP is very much viewed as a pixel-oriented image editor primarily. Embrace the UNIX philosophy and use appropriate tools for the task at hand. All-in-one functionality is not a priority in GNU/Linux. :-)

Please help! I simply want to freehand-select part of an image, move/copy it to another image and SOFTEN or feather the edges before pasting it. Or maybe select an area, adjust the brightness/gamma/contrast, then soften the edges to create an aura effect. It was so very easy in FotoTouch Color from Logitech, but something like GIMP makes it sooooo very COMPLICATED, I hate to even try it -- again. Is there a Linux software that really keeps it simple? I don't need layers, paths, alpha channels, etc., but I do need those SOFT EDGES. Thanks!

For me, blend modes are very important.

im using the good old Gimps :D "D

Might have to do a video on a pihole to remove the ads in Photopea. Please ignore if already done so.

can you do an update? are these programs capable for the feature they were lacking?

Using Krita currently.

once again i'd like to thank you for your video. i use linux now and I'm "stuck" with gimp and krita. however. i've been a professional photographer for a few years (quit in 2005) but i never had to deal with CMYK. the guys from the magazines took care of the CMYK adjustments. anyway i heard a rumor that it will be coming soon to gimp. one thing you mentioned made me a little worried. i just installed a flash player on my chrome browser. is there any reason to worry? shall i uninstall it right away? I installed it only because of the need to book a sit on a train last week. i use linux mint.

GIMP is designed as a Photoshop alternative, while Krita is modeled against Painter. If you know the difference between Photoshop and Painter, the same applies to GIMP and Krita.

👍 VERY helpful review. Thank you!

Are you going to do a video about Linux Illustrator alternatives?

How important is it to be able to work directly in CMYK? What are the disadvantages of working in RGB and converting from and to CMYK on import and export respectively? How viable is it to run Photoshop CS5 under Wine? Reports seems to suggest it's a mixed bag.

Thanks for the video. I wish you would have touched on the topic of Raw file handling. That's my #1 requirement.

So if you don't work with PSD files, and your RGB to CMYK conversion tools are perfect then you should use GIMP ... i.e. since Photoshop is now subscription everyone should use GIMP ...

I'm using Adobe Photoshop without problems installed under Wine in Linux Mint.