As we all know, how powerful the brand Photoshop CC is? Without any doubt, anybody would go for Photoshop blindly.
Everybody ranging from amateurs to professionals use this software and would trust it with anything. When it comes to editing your images, Adobe Photoshop is one of the most software solutions around. Photoshop can literally convert any photograph into a fantastic masterpiece.
Unfortunately, the Creative Cloud subscription that you will need to run Photoshop properly can be pretty expensive for some users. Especially for those photographers who are amateurs or those who are just launching their own brand. On top of that, you might find it a bit confusing because there are so many tools to choose from in Photoshop, you might think that this tool is more complicated to use than other available options.
So, let’s find out what the free alternatives to Photoshop are? Ultimately, that’s our main topic to talk about here today,
PHOTOPEA
This is an online website that looks exactly like Photoshop. The page layout and the options are just so similar to that of Photoshop. You can easily find it in any application store.
Photopea was launched on 14 September 2003 by its developer, who’s known as Ivan Kuckir. It is Adware that stands for advertising-supported software. Here, the software helps in generating revenue for the developer by developing online ads automatically.
Photopea refers to a web-based graphics editing software that has the capability of working with both raster and vector graphics. This software allows working for various fields such as picture editing, image rendering, digital illustrations, web designing, or working with different image formats.
The finest part is that this software is compatible with all the latest modern web browsers, which include Edge, Chrome, Opera, and even Firefox. This software is compatible with Photoshop’s PSD as well as JPEG, PNG, DNG, GIF, SVG, PDF, and other image file formats. While browser-based, Photopea stores all files locally and does not upload any data to a server.
Photopea comes with a vast variety of photo editing tools, including all the user-favorite features like patch tools, clone stamp healing brush, spot healing. This software supports all kinds of features like layer masks, layers, layer styles, selections, smart objects, channels, paths, text layers, presets, and vector shapes.
GIMP
GIMP is one of the most famous free alternatives of Photoshop; GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. This platform is a must-known for photographers who are searching for something that can stay up-to-date with their editing skills, no matter how easy or complicated they are.
GIMP literally comes with a varied range of incredible features; you can compare it by looking back its inability to edit original files and can invest little time in getting comfortable with this complicated UI, while this software will cover all your basics.
Some of its features are as follow:
Color grading: here, you can play with the color palette as if you are being provided with an empty canvas. There are different ways of selecting your colors and their gradients, including color choosers, color palettes, and you can use an eyedropper tool to choose a color of your choice that you want to work with. GIMP’s in-built color choosing tool consists of different scales like RGB/LAB/HSV/LCH selectors, color-wheel selectors, CMYK selectors, and water-color selectors. You can also select colors by the use of hexadecimal color codes, just as in HTML color selection.
You will find more other features like a blending tool, which is used in blending the color patches on your image. The desired color blending effect can be done by applying a specific color gradient to the surface of a photo and then using GIMP’s color modes. Gradients are also classified into tools such as the most known brush tool; when a user uses this tool to make an artwork, the output color gradually changes. Although there are a considerable number of default gradients available, if the user wants, they can create their very own custom gradients with the available tools. The cherry on top is that you will find Gradient plug-ins also in this software.
Image Editing: in this software, you will find a lot of tools for image editing as well. Whatever you can find in photoshop, every tool is available here under the image editing section, ranging from pencil, paintbrushes with different sizes and intensity, eraser, airbrush, pen tool, and ink tools that can be used to create new or blended pixels.
Now let’s come down to the Bucket Fill tool. When you want to fill a specific area in your image with color, you can make a selection with the lasso tool and apply this Bucket Fill tool to fill the desired color on that selected area. The same can be applied if you are working with a design or pattern and you want the whole area to be painted with that pattern, and then the Bucket Fill tool is what you should be looking for. Whereas, if you want to fill a selected area with a different color gradient, then you should apply the blend tool here. These color transitions can be used on large portions or smaller custom-made path selections.
Now let’s break down another feature that GIMP provides its users. That is, this software comes with a “Smart tool” feature where it consists of more tools. And they are used to make your artwork ready in a pretty time-saving manner. This feature uses a more complex algorithm to make edits more straightforward and fast. Let’s see, what are they:
Clone tool, it is used to copy pixels by the use of a brush
Healing brush, it is used to copy pixels from a particular area and helps in correcting color and tone
Perspective clone tool, it is used to correct the distance changes but also has a similar working style as the clone tool.
The blur and sharpen tool is used to blur and sharpen the image with the help of a brush.
The Smudge tool is used to smear a selected area very subtly, where it’s pointed.
Dodge and burn tool is a brush that is used to make target pixels appear lighter (dodges) or darker (burns)
OUTLOOK :
It’s indeed a very important fact that it is not always about which software or what device you are using, sometimes it is also about how passionate you are about your work and to what extends you can reach to get your job done perfectly. Now, if you have reached till here, I hope you have got the answers to your quest. With this free software, I expect nothing can stop you now, and you can keep editing your photos just as good as Photoshop.