8 Best Photoshop Alternatives You Need To Know

If you are looking for the best Photoshop Alternatives, you have come to the right place.

When it comes to Photo Editing, Adobe Photoshop is the one-stop destination for most. It is certainly one of the best photo editors out there and needless to say that it has already become an industry standard for photo editing. 

However, paying a $20 subscription charge per month may not be that affordable for many. Especially if you are someone who just started out your editing journey, you will find it hard to pay the subscription charges on time.

It is also worth saying that, not everyone really needs advanced photo editing software like Photoshop to deal with their editing tasks. 

This is where Photoshop alternatives shine, they are easy to work with and have much lower charges or are even free of cost.

Considering the different aspects of photo editing, we have curated this list of the best alternatives to Photoshop by including all kinds of tools you will ever require. 

So without wasting any more time, let us take a look at those 8 online photo editor like photoshop to get your work done.

8 Best Photoshop Alternatives You Need To Know

1. PicMonkey
2. Canva
3. Pixlr Editor
4. Corel PHOTO-PAINT
5. Affinity Photo
6. Sketch
7. GIMP 
8. Inkscape

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a web-based Photoshop alternative tool that is both feature-rich and easy to use. It can help you in creating appealing visuals without not having many design skills.

All you need to do is drag and drop your required image in the PicMonkey workspace and start making changes accordingly. As it is significantly easier to use compared to Photoshop, you can literally complete your designs in no time. 

It packs in over 2000 customizable templates and 70 pre-set canvases to assist users in creating multi-photo designs with little effort.

A mobile version of PicMonkey is also available, which makes it possible to carry on your work on the go. All the changes made are directly synced across all your devices with the help of Cloud Storage. 

You can try a free trial of PicMonkey image editor for a limited time and later opt-in for their paid version if interested.

The paid subscription comes in two packages; namely Basic and Pro. The basic plan costs $7.99/month and the pro plan costs $12.99/month, where you can also choose to pay for a year which helps you save a fraction of the subscription charge.

Canva

Canva is a simple yet robust best free photo editor online with which anyone can create appealing graphic designs in a little while. The photo editing tool can provide a hassle-free designing experience even for people who don’t have a certain level of graphic designing skills.

Unlike Free Photoshop, you won’t be seeing a stack of tools in Canva as it is mainly based on templates and layouts. Instead, you will be provided with millions of stock images, layouts, templates, fonts, icons, etc to create quotes and your design with no mess.

The cross-platform support of Canva is no exception. You can use Canva with the help of any web browser or download the Canva app for your phone.

Even if you can’t access your computer, you can easily make use of the Canva app on your smartphone to complete your projects i.e Infographics, you can proposal, Social Media Banners, logos, and much more. Coming to the pricing, Canva comes in both free and paid versions. 

Pixlr Editor

Pixlr Editor is a Photoshop-like editing tool that comes with a range of tools preferable for both basic and advanced image editing. It has a fairly easy-to-use interface, and as a result, you will feel a lot easier if you are already familiar with Photoshop. 

It is completely web-based in type and the interesting part here is that; it comes in two variants; namely, Pixlr X and Pixlr E. The Pixlr X is a basic photo editor with a modern look and feels preferable for beginners.

Whereas the Pixlr E is an advanced photo editor with more useful features for more professional editing.

Users can try both Pixlr X and E on their websites for free. However, you will require purchasing any of their premium plans to export your edited photos to your local storage.

Corel PHOTO-PAINT

Corel PHOTO-PAINT is an excellent alternative to Photoshop with some amazing features and support for both Mac and Windows. Corel released PHOTO-PAINT as a complementing app to their well-renowned Corel Draw.

With PHOTO-PAINT you can seamlessly handle professional photo editing with the help of their vivid tools and effects.

With the latest version of the installed, you can experience some real magic with their AI-Powered image enhancement techniques. For instance, you can enlarge images and improve their size and quality without losing no details! 

Unlike our first three recommendations on the list, Corel PHOTO-PAINT is native software for your computer. As a result, you will need to download and install Corel PHOTO-PAINT on your computer to start working with it.

Affinity Photo

If there could be a best-paid alternative to Photoshop, it’s Affinity Photo. It is almost as powerful as Photoshop and is used by many industries leading professionals.

Not only it looks similar to Photoshop but also in its set of features.

Yes, Affinity Photo brings a variety of useful tools as well. 

Be it retouching, composition, or even full RAW development, Affinity Photo can do it all. It also supports a variety of Plugins. You can find the app on multiple platforms like Windows, Mac, and iPad OS.

Unlike Photoshop, there’s no monthly subscription fee for Affinity Photo. Instead, users will only need to pay a one-time payment of $49.99.

Sketch

As the name suggests, Sketch is an incredible app that is mostly focused on Vector Graphic designers working on Mac.

It comes with a group of handy features that you can find in Photoshop, and Illustrator combined. That said, you can make use of Sketch for designing UI, Flyers, and other custom designs as you like.

It has one of the finest user interfaces, which makes it easy for even non-professionals to take their designs to the next level. No matter which level of designer you are, they have got a pretty powerful community to guide you on your design needs. 

Well, if you feel like you are missing some features, don’t worry. There are plenty of community-made plugins to extend the functionality of Sketch. Coming to its pricing, Sketch has a subscription charge of $99/Year which is fair when compared to Photoshop and illustrator.

GIMP

The list cannot be complete without GIMP. Yes, GIMP is undoubtedly the best free alternative to Photoshop. Some of the best things which keep GIMP on top of the game is that it is absolutely free to use and still comes with pretty much every tool you will ever require. 

You may feel using GIMP is a bit confusing if you are new to photo editing. But hey, you can find a plethora of GIMP tutorials on the internet. As an active user of GIMP for years, I can say that GIMP has come a long way.

So if you are just starting up your designing journey, you will definitely find GIMP helpful as it does not require any subscription charges like Photoshop. 

As it’s a free tool, you might miss some parts of Photoshop in it for sure. But you can always go through a variety of plugins that are quite useful in such cases.

Finally, it is available on platforms like Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Inkscape

Inkscape is yet another Photoshop alternative to consider if you are mainly into Vector designing. You can design vectors, illustrations, logos, etc using Inkscape. It has a wide user base and community support, which is really helpful for those who are just starting out. 

On the design front, Inkscape has a fairly good user interface along with a vast set of vector designing tools. It does support multiple file support, as a result, you can import and export basically any file type seamlessly.

Unlike Sketch (which we have discussed above), Inkscape is free to use and open-source. Hence, you can use Inkscape to draw out your creativity free of cost.

Wrapping Up

So these were our picks for the best Photoshop alternatives you will ever need. Whether you are a beginner or a professional in the design field, I’m pretty sure that you will find these tools helpful.

We have selected each of these Photoshop alternatives based on different priorities and types of work.

You can choose one which suits the best for your work to get done.

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