10 Best Free Photoshop Alternatives
For the longest time, Photoshop has been the backbone of the professional graphic design and photography community. It lets you go into great detail and do magical things with your images. So why wouldn’t you want to try your hand at it? However, in this fast-paced, social media-fueled day and age, not everyone has the time, patience and money to use elaborate software like photoshop. For those who prefer the easier (and free-er) options, there is a wide variety of software that will help you fix-up and get the best out of your pictures.
Let’s take you on a journey to figure out some free software that will help you out in your day to day life without being heavy on your pocket. These vary from ones that will help you with basic retouching to the ones that can take you into the depths of image editing.
Here’s a list of 10 of the best free Photoshop alternatives in 2021-
- Luminar
- Super Enhance
- Fotor
- Gimp
- Photopea
- Pixlr
- Spicy
- Be Funky
- Fotojet
- Photo Diva
- Luminar
A sophisticated alternative for photoshop, Luminar is the first image editor powered by artificial intelligence. It helps you deal with problematic images that you desperately want to save and deals with the minute changes like manually adjusting the specifics of brightness, contrasts, saturation, etc.
One of the coolest features is the AI sky replacement tool that offers an amazing way to edit outdoor images. It focuses on just the sky and uplifts it in a mesmerizing way.
Another brilliant feature is the “AI structure”, which emphasizes the image’s clarity rather than the sharpness, making the image true to life and not artificially saturated.
Pricing – A 7-day free trial period followed by $69 for the full version
Super Enhance is an easy-to-use, online photo editor with the capabilities to automatically enhance and upscale photos with just one click. All you need to do is upload the picture and click on the AI-powered tools that show instant, sophisticated results.
It’s a great software for people who need fast, accurate photo edits and lacks the knowledge to adjust all the different settings in a picture manually.
It has one of the best low-light adjustment features of all time that can bring out the most minute details in an image with bad lighting.
The software also provides you with an array of filters that enhance your image in a natural and unsaturated way.
Pricing – 5 free credits, after which only certain features will be chargeable.
3. Fotor
A feature intensive software, Fotor offers a wide variety of enhancement tools that help control even the most minute edits in a photograph and can cause some people to feel overwhelmed. However, it has a user-friendly, clean design that is easy to use.
Apart from the basic adjustment like crop, colour balance, denoise, exposure, etc., it has a beauty feature that is exceptionally thorough and can eliminate the tiniest wrinkle from the corner of your eye.
All in all, great software for amateur photographers to play around with.
Pricing – Free with premium subscriptions at $8.99/month or 39.99/year.
4. Gimp
GIMP is a free, cross-platform image editor which allows you to modify and distribute the software. In simple words, you can fix bugs and errors yourself and also add your own tools. This software has the capabilities to support RAW files, which is what sets it apart from other free software. GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to enhance your productivity and creativity.
In theory, it is a slightly simpler version of photoshop. So although it may be free, it may not be as simple as the one-touch capabilities that some other software has.
Pricing — Free
5. Photopea
Photopea is software that mimics photoshop to an alarming degree. The look and feel of this are almost the same as photoshop.
You can also open and work on PSD format files and save files in the PSD format.
Photopea is meant to be an actual Photoshop replacement. Hence, it is a bit more professional than some of the easy to use apps in this list.
It’s a great software for people who like working on photoshop but don’t want to pay as much.
Pricing – Free. 30-day licenses- $5. 90-day licenses – $12
6. Pixlr
Pixlr is a web-based photo editor that is quite similar to Photopea, so that its tools mimic Photoshop. It lets you edit photos and also create designs in your browser for free.
Working in layers is a possibility to perform in-depth edits of images using complex operations. It has AI-powered tools that help you experience next-level photo editing and graphic designing for quick yet professional edits.
Although this software is similar to photoshop, it is much simpler to use.
Pricing – Free.
7. Ipiccy
Ipiccy is one of the easiest to use photo editing software there is. Choose between editing pictures, creating a collage or starting a new design. The photo editor is fun and easy to use. With an array of options to enhance your image, from Auto Fix to Curves, this software is useful for people who have needs of varying difficulty levels.
An extensive software, it takes you through different textures, stickers, frames, blending modes etc. You can spend hours on it just having fun.
Pricing – Free.
8. Be Funky
A great app for beginners, Be Funky has a great design and an extremely user-friendly approach. Equipped with all the basic photo editing features, it also has additional stickers and graphics, overlays and frames to enhance your image.
The best feature, though, is the AI image enhance button that does a pretty good job for you in just one click.
However, most of the features are chargeable, so you will have to spend some amount of money to use all of them. But you will be able to do the basic editing of the image, with features like crop, resize, rotate, exposure, beautify, smoothening and blur, free of cost.
Pricing – Certain chargeable features.
9. Fotojet
This is one of those apps that need very little guidance. For the photo editing novice, Fotojet is easy to use and fun to work with. It can make quick enhancements to your image without a lot of effort.
Fotojet has 3 options, Create a design, Make a collage, and edit a photo. Like Be Funky, this app also has a few basic free features, but the rest are chargeable. They do, however, have a 7-day free trial.
Pricing – A 7-day free period followed by premium subscriptions for $6.99/month or $39.99/year
10. Photo Diva
This is a downloadable app for your desktop. Mainly for portraits and face edits, PhotoDIva eliminates skin problems and wrinkles, sculpts facial features and reshapes the body. Along with this, you can also play around with their virtual make-up tool and experiment with hair and eye colour.
PhotoDIva provides you with advanced, one-click beauty enhancements that will make a portrait social media-ready. You can take a plain, dull picture of your face and add a pop of colour to it with the hair and make-up tools.
Pricing – Free