Free Adobe Lightroom Alternatives For Mac
Luminar 2018, which is the latest edition of photo editing software from Skylum, is arguably one of the most advanced photo editing solutions available in the market. The product offers a great competition to Adobe Lightroom, which is available to users through a monthly subscription fee. Some of the lower-cost Photoshop alternatives come from Adobe itself: Serious Photographers can get most of the Photoshop features they need in the company's workflow application, Lightroom, which. Lightroom Alternatives: Image Management + Processing Apps. Apple Aperture and Lightroom pioneered combining image management with image processing. Before that, there were management apps like iMatch or iView MediaPro and processing apps like Rawshooter and Bibble. So you would run them side-by-side, organizing in one and processing in the other. There has been a lot of talk lately about Lightroom alternatives. Much of this has been amplified by disquiet over the recent decision of Adobe to go subscription only, although there have been grumblings about this for a while. Plus, with the plethora of tools on offer in Photoshop, it can be quite tough to use. So, if you are looking for a Photoshop alternative that’s easier to use or a free Photoshop alternative for your Windows PC, Mac, Linux machine or even your Android or iOS device, well we have you covered.
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There are dozens of free photo editors out there, so we've hand-picked the very best so you can make your pictures look amazing without paying a penny.
We've spent hours putting a huge range of photo editors to the test, and picked out the best ones for any level of skill and experience. From powerful software packed with features that give Photoshop a run for its money to simple tools that give your pictures a whole new look with a couple of clicks, there's something for everyone.
Many free photo editors only offer a very limited selection of tools unless you pay for a subscription, or place a watermark on exported images, but none of the tools here carry any such restrictions. Whichever one you choose, you can be sure that there are no hidden tricks to catch you out.
An Adobe Lightroom Alternative for Photographers: On1 Photo RAW Review Before I jump into my review of On1 Photo RAW, I want to point something out again. I am coming from a CS6 and Lightroom 5 prospective. For example, not all free Photoshop alternatives support the Adobe application's default PSD format. Others, meanwhile, will not be able to recognize some multi-layered Photoshop files. Others, meanwhile, will not be able to recognize some multi-layered Photoshop files.
1. GIMP
The best free photo editor for advanced image editing
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It's packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you'd find in premium software, and more are being added every day.
The photo editing toolkit is breathtaking, and features layers, masks, curves, and levels. You can eliminate flaws easily with the excellent clone stamp and healing tools, create custom brushes, apply perspective changes, and apply changes to isolated areas with smart selection tools.
GIMP is an open source free photo editor, and its community of users and developers have created a huge collection of plugins to extend its utility even further. Many of these come pre-installed, and you can download more from the official glossary. If that's not enough, you can even install Photoshop plugins.
2. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019
Fuss-free photo editing with automatic optimization tools
If you've got a lot of photos that you need to edit in a hurry, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019 could be the tool for you. Its interface is clean and uncluttered, and utterly devoid of ads (although you'll need to submit an email address before you can start using it).
Importing pictures is a breeze, and once they've been added to the pool, you can select several at once to rotate or mirror, saving you valuable time. You can also choose individual photos to enhance with the software's one-click optimization tool. In our tests this worked particularly well on landscapes, but wasn't always great for other subjects.
If you want to make manual color and exposure corrections, there are half a dozen sliders to let you do exactly that. It's a shame you can't also apply the same color changes to a whole set of pictures at once, but this is otherwise a brilliant free photo editor for making quick corrections.
For more advanced editing, check out Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 – the premium version of the software with enhanced optimization tools.
3. Canva
Professional-level photo editing and templates in your browser
Canva is a photo editor that runs in your web browser, and is ideal for turning your favorite snaps into cards, posters, invitations and social media posts. If you're interested in maintaining a polished online presence, it's the perfect tool for you.
Canva has two tiers, free and paid, but the free level is perfect for home users. Just sign up with your email address and you'll get 1GB free cloud storage for your snaps and designs, 8,000 templates to use and edit, and two folders to keep your work organized.
You won't find advanced tools like clone brushes and smart selectors here, but there's a set of handy sliders for applying tints, vignette effects, sharpening, adjusting brightness, saturation and contrast, and much more. The text editing tools are intuitive, and there's a great selection of backgrounds and other graphics to complete your designs.
4. Fotor
Free Adobe Lightroom Alternatives
One-click enhancements to make your photos shine in seconds
Fotor is a free photo editor that's ideal for giving your pictures a boost quickly. If there's specific area of retouching you need doing with, say, the clone brush or healing tool, you're out of luck. However, if your needs are simple, its stack of high-end filters really shine.
There's a foolproof tilt-shift tool, for example, and a raft of vintage and vibrant colour tweaks, all easily accessed through Fotor's clever menu system. You can manually alter your own curves and levels, too, but without the complexity of high-end tools.
Fotor's standout function, and one that's sorely lacking in many free photo editors, is its batch processing tool – feed it a pile of pics and it'll filter the lot of them in one go, perfect if you have a memory card full of holiday snaps and need to cover up the results of a dodgy camera or shaky hand.
5. Photo Pos Pro
Advanced photo editing tools packaged in a simple interface
Photo Pos Pro isn't as well known as Paint.net and GIMP, but it's another top-quality free photo editor that's packed with advanced image-enhancing tools.
This free photo editor's interface is smarter and more accessible than GIMP's array of menus and toolbars, with everything arranged in a logical and consistent way. If it's still too intimidating, there's also an optional 'novice' layout that resembles Fotor's filter-based approach. The choice is yours.
The 'expert' layout offers both layers and layer masks for sophisticated editing, as well as tools for adjusting curves and levels manually. You can still access the one-click filters via the main menu, but the focus is much more on fine editing.
6. Paint.NET
Looking a little dated, but still a dependable all-rounder
More is not, believe it or not, always better. Paint.NET's simplicity is one of its main selling points; it's a quick, easy to operate free photo editor that's ideal for trivial tasks that don't necessarily justify the sheer power of tools like GIMP.
Don't let the name fool you, though. This isn't just a cheap copy of Microsoft's ultra-basic Paint – even if it was originally meant to replace it. It's a proper photo editor, just one that lands on the basic side of the curve.
Paint.NET’s interface will remind you of its namesake, but over the years, they’ve added advanced editing tools like layers, an undo history, a ton of filters, myriad community-created plugins, and a brilliant 3D rotate/zoom function that's handy for recomposing images.
7. PhotoScape
Raw image conversion, batch processing and much more
PhotoScape might look like a rather simple free photo editor, but take a look at its main menu and you'll find a wealth of features: raw conversion, photo splitting and merging, animated GIF creation, and even a rather odd (but useful) function with which you can print lined, graph or sheet music paper.
The meat, of course, is in the photo editing. PhotoScape's interface is among the most esoteric of all the apps we've looked at here, with tools grouped into pages in odd configurations. It certainly doesn't attempt to ape Photoshop, and includes fewer features.
We'd definitely point this towards the beginner, but that doesn't mean you can't get some solid results. PhotoScape's filters are pretty advanced, so it's if good choice if you need to quickly level, sharpen or add mild filtering to pictures in a snap.
8. Pixlr X
A comprehensive browser-based photo editor for quick results
Pixlr X is the successor to Pixlr Editor, which was one of our favorite free online photo editors for many years.
Pixlr X makes several improvements on its predecessor. For starters, it's based on HTML5 rather than Flash, which means it can run in any modern browser. It's also slick and well designed, with an interface that's reminiscent of Photoshop Express, and a choice of dark or light color schemes.
With Pixlr X, you can make fine changes to colors and saturation, sharpen and blur images, apply vignette effects and frames, and combine multiple images. There's also support for layers, which you won't find in many free online photo editors, and an array of tools for painting and drawing. A great choice for even advanced tasks.
9. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor
A convenient way to correct lighting and exposure problems
As its name suggests, Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a trimmed-down, browser-based version of the company's world-leading photo editing software. Perhaps surprisingly, it features a more extensive toolkit than the downloadable Photoshop Express app, but it only supports images in JPG format that are below 16MB.
Again, this is a Flash-based tool, but Adobe provides handy mobile apps for all platforms so you won’t miss out if you’re using a smartphone or tablet.
This free online photo editor has all the panache you’d expect from Adobe, and although it doesn’t boast quite as many tools as some of its rivals, everything that’s there is polished to perfection. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a pleasure to use. Its only drawbacks are the limits on uploaded file size and types, and lack of support for layers.
10. PiZap
A fun photo editor for preparing your pictures for social media
Free online photo editor PiZap is available in both HTML5 and Flash editions, making it suitable for any device. You can choose to work with a photo from your hard drive, Facebook, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Search, or a catalog of stock images. This is an impressive choice, though some of the stock images are only available to premium subscribers, and you'll need to watch out for copyright issues if you use a pic straight from Google Images.
piZap’s editing interface has a dark, modern design that makes heavy use of sliders for quick adjustments – a system that works much better than tricky icons and drop-down menus if you’re using a touchscreen device.
When you’re done, you can share your creation on all the biggest social media networks, as well as piZap’s own servers, Dropbox and Google Drive. Alternatively, you can save it to your hard drive, send it via email, or grab an embed code. You can only export your work in high quality if you’ve opened your wallet for the premium editor, but for silly social sharing that’s unlikely to be a problem.
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First released roughly three decades ago, Adobe Photoshop is the gold standard preferred by some of the world's top visual artists. Its powerful tools help photographers create almost anything the imagination conjures.
Photoshop is now licensed as part of the Adobe Creative Crowd suite of subscription-based software. But instead of paying the monthly fee if your budget is constrained or your use case is minimal, try a free, open-source alternative.
Before you download a Photoshop alternative, plan for your specific needs. For example, not all free Photoshop alternatives support the Adobe application's default PSD format. Others, meanwhile, will not be able to recognize some multi-layered Photoshop files. If you need a key Photoshop feature, you'll find it easier to narrow your search list if you filter based on features.
GIMP
What We Like
Constantly updated with new features.
Highly customizable and extensible.
What We Don't Like
Limited support for layers, macros, and custom shapes.
Cluttered UI with annoying floating windows.
One of the most full-featured Photoshop alternatives, GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program) offers such a large set of features that even the most complex tasks can be achieved without any strain on your budget. They say that you get what you pay for, but in GIMP's case, that idiom doesn't necessarily ring true. With a very active developer community that has historically listened to user requests and feedback, this free option continues to advance as raster editor technology expands.
While not always as intuitive as Photoshop in terms of functionality and design, GIMP makes up for some of its perceived clumsiness with several in-depth tutorials for both beginning and advanced users that help you use the majority of its components with little or no pre-existing knowledge of the open-source application. With that said, if you're only looking for the very basics in a raster-based graphics editor then GIMP may actually be a little too much and you may benefit from one of the simpler alternatives on our list.
Available in almost twenty languages for the Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms, GIMP recognizes almost all file formats that you'd expect from a paid editor like Photoshop including GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF among others, as well as partial support for PSD files (not all layers may be readable).
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom For Mac
Also similar to Photoshop, a large number of external plugins are available that enhance GIMP's functionality further. As always, download at your own risk when dealing with non-native repositories.
Pixlr
What We Like
Extensive layer support with multiple blending modes.
Includes built-in filters and adjustment tools.
What We Don't Like
No social media integration.
Layer masks tool is cumbersome to use at first.
A browser-based alternative to Photoshop, Pixlr is owned by well-known software developers Autodesk and is quite robust when it comes to available features and allows for progressive editing and enhancing as well as original image design.
The Pixlr Express and Pixlr Editor web apps will run in most modern browsers as long as you have Flash 10 or above installed; they offer a significant number of integrated filters along with limited layer support. Pixlr recognizes the main graphical file formats such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG and also allows you to view some PSD files, although those larger in size or complex in nature may not open.
The web-based Pixlr even has a handy Webcam feature built right into its dashboard that lets you capture and manipulate photos on-the-fly.
In addition to the browser version, Pixlr also has free apps for both Android and iOS devices that let you perform a number of editing features from your smartphone or tablet. The Android app is so popular, in fact, that it has been installed on well over 50 million devices.
Paint.NET
What We Like
Streamlined interface is a breeze to navigate.
Helpful keyboard shortcuts.
What We Don't Like
UI lacks a tool for managing plug-ins.
Text can't be edited after it's deselected.
A free Photoshop alternative strictly for Windows versions 7 through 10, the Paint.NET interface is reminiscent of the operating system's Paint application; the built-in image editing tool for PC users worldwide. The similarities are no coincidence, as the original developer's intent was to replace MS Paint with something a little better.
That was a long time ago, and Paint.NET has since grown by leaps and bounds to the point where it's comparable in some ways to the more advanced editing software on the market, both free and paid. This includes the ability to use multiple layers and blending, all the while maintaining a fairly simple interface that lends itself to even the most novice user. If you do get stuck, the Paint.NET forums are an invaluable source for assistance where inquiries are sometimes answered in mere minutes. Couple that with the tutorials found on the same website and this Windows-only graphics editor offers a user-friendly experience.
Although Paint.NET does not provide some of the higher-end functionality of Photoshop or even GIMP, its feature set can be expanded upon through the use of external plugins. For example, the application does not natively support PSD files but can open Photoshop Documents after the PSD plugin is installed.
The self-proclaimed fastest image editor available, Paint.NET can run in almost two dozen languages and is free to use for both business and commercial use with no restrictions.
PicMonkey
What We Like
Supports cloud storage integration.
You can make custom collages without signing up.
What We Don't Like
No layer support.
Free version is rather limited.
Another platform-independent, web-based design and editing tool with a lot to offer is PicMonkey, which was seemingly designed with the neophyte user in mind but also packs a punch for those looking for more state-of-the-art features. As long as you have a browser running Flash, PicMonkey is accessible on virtually any platform and lets you start your creation from scratch or begin editing an existing image file in under a minute.
PicMonkey will not replace Photoshop's more advanced functionality and you won't have much luck with PSD files, but it is ideal for working with filters and even creating collages from within your favorite browser. The free version offers quite a bit in terms of features, but you'll need to pony up some cash if you want access to some of the app's exclusive effects, fonts, and tools as well as an advertisement-free experience.
The premium adaptation of PicMonkey features a seven-day free trial that can be activated by providing your email address and payment information. If you want to continue using its advanced functionality long-term, though, a monthly fee of $7.99 or $47.88 for an annual membership is required.
With an oft-updated blog featuring a bevy of tips and tutorials, you should be able to figure out whether or not PicMonkey is the right option to suit your needs within the week-long trial period.
Smartphone and tablet users may also want to try the free PicMonkey Photo Editor app, available for both Android and iOS platforms.
SumoPaint
What We Like
Great layer support.
Affordable pro package.
One of our personal favorites, SumoPaint's interface will look familiar if you have past Photoshop experience. The similarities are more than just skin deep, too, as its layering functionality and fairly wide range of editing tools, including several brushes and wand types, make it a formidable alternative.
The free version of SumoPaint runs in most Flash-enabled browsers and is mainly supported by on-page ads. There is also a Chrome Web App available for Chromebooks as well as users running Google's browser on other desktop operating systems.
More intricate projects may not be suitable for SumoPaint, and its file support is somewhat limited and does not include Photoshop's default PSD format. You can open files with traditional image extensions such as GIF, JPEG, and PNG while edits can be saved in the app's native SUMO format as well as JPEG or PNG.
If you try the free version and feel that SumoPaint is what you've been looking for, then you may want to give Sumo Pro a whirl. The paid version allows for an ad-free experience as well as access to additional features and tools for about $4 per month if you pay for a year in advance. Sumo Pro also offers a downloadable version of its software that can be used while offline, as well as access to a dedicated technical support team and cloud storage.
Krita
What We Like
Customizable interface.
Brush tools feature detailed previews.
What We Don't Like
Updates are often unstable.
Consumes a lot of CPU resources.
An interesting editing and painting tool, Krita is an open source application that has seen its feature set expand significantly in recent years. With a nifty palette and a seemingly endless amount of brush customizations that can be stabilized to smooth out even the most unsteady hand, this Photoshop alternative supports most PSD files and offers advanced layer management.
Free to download, the regularly updated desktop application also uses OpenGL and allows you to author and manipulate HDR images — among many other benefits. Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows, Krita boasts a fairly active forum containing sample artwork created by members of its user community.
There is another version of Krita optimized for ultrabooks and other touchscreen PCs, named Gemini, available from Valve's Steam platform.
Adobe Photoshop Express
What We Like
No registration required.
Excellent white balance adjustment with numerous presets.
What We Don't Like
Requires an internet connection to use.
Only edits JPEG files.
While Adobe charges a fee to use its main Photoshop software, the company does offer free image editing tools in the form of the Photoshop Express application. Available for Android, iOS and Windows tablets and phones, this surprisingly capable app allows you to enhance and tweak your photos in a number of ways.
In addition to correcting problems such as red eye with just a tap of the finger, Photoshop Express also makes it easy to apply unique effects and incorporate custom frames and borders before sharing your pictures on social media or elsewhere from right within the app itself.