Photoshop is an absolute staple of modern graphic design, an industry standard for over 30 years. It’s also insanely expensive: no longer available as a stand-alone program, you’ll pay Adobe a minimum of $120 every year to use it as a part of a Creative Cloud subscription. That’s a lot of dough to drop, especially if you’re only using it for the occasional photo edit.
There are low-cost alternatives to Photoshop, like Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements or Affinity Photo. But if you’re looking to get the job done without spending a dime, you have a few surprising options. For even more no-cost alternatives to popular software, be sure to check out our roundup of the best free software for your PC.
A free web-based Photoshop clone: Photopea
Photopea is a web-based editor, available in any browser. The big appeal here is that, in addition to being free, its interface is based directly on the tools and menus of Photoshop. Veterans of Adobe software who aren’t looking to learn an entirely new system are served especially well here.
Photopea
Being web-based, Photopea can’t take advantage of powerful hardware, and a few keyboard shortcuts need to be re-learned for long-time Photoshop users. But all things considered, it’s a remarkably effective alternative. Free users get access to all of the program’s tools, but a $3 per month plan unlocks a longer history and banishes ads.
Use Photopea online here
A complex but powerful alternative: GIMP
A long-time favorite of Linux users, the GIMP image editor is now available on all platforms. While its interface isn’t exactly friendly to beginners — especially if you’re used to other programs — it’s at least as powerful as Photoshop for standard image editing tasks.
GIMP
GIMP is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. GNU is short for “GNU is not Unix.” Unix is — you know what, we’re getting distracted. Just know that GIMP is at least as flexible as Photoshop in terms of capability (albeit without some of the whiz-bang additions in Creative Cloud), so long as you’re willing to dive into a wiki or two.
Download GIMP here
For quick and easy edits: Paint.NET
This Windows-first editing program has been in continual development for almost two decades. As the name implies, it’s a more powerful alternative to the built-in Paint tool that’s still a staple of the operating system. But don’t let the name fool you: Paint.NET is much closer to Photoshop than Paint in terms of capability.
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While it lacks some of the more advanced graphic design tools in Adobe’s belt, Paint.NET can handle more or less any basic editing task, with …….
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/551303/5-free-alternatives-to-photoshop-for-windows.html