7 Adobe Photoshop CC Alternatives-PCMAGAZINE
Mad as hell at Adobe's
recent shift to a subscription model with Creative Cloud? You're not
alone! Check out these low-cost and free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop
CC.
- June 21, 2013
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 lists for $149. Photo enthusiasts and imaging hobbyist will get what they need from the even less-expensive Photoshop Elements, which actually simplifies creating a lot of the effects pros produce in Photoshop itself. It's available directly from Adobe for $99 standalone or $149 in a bundle with sister program Premiere Elements, an enthusiast-level video editor.
Even lower-cost Photoshop alternatives come from competitors. One of the longest-standing of these is Corel, with its similarly named Paintshop Pro ($59.99), which offers a surprising amount of Photoshop-like functionality. Another competitor is ACDSee, which offers three levels of imaging applications, the lightweight, starting with the basic ACDSee ($19.99) program, which offers brush-on edits, 20 effect filters, drawing tools, and noise reduction. At the midlevel is the $49 ACDSee Photo Editor, which gets closer to Photoshop, with object layers, tools like Red Eye and Smudge, Text, and batch editing. Along the lines of Lightroom is ACDSee Pro, which powerful app sells for a remarkable $39.99 (discounted from $99.99).
But if you really want to save money, there's a lot you can do for free, and even in some cases, in a web browser. The granddaddy of free but powerful image-editing software is "the Gimp." This extremely customizable and powerful open-source application is, however, very far from being a usability champ—expect a high learning curve. Even though it lives in your web browser, Autodesk's Pixlr Editor is an amazingly powerful web-based image editor that can even work with layers and sports toolbars and panels that will look familiar to any Photoshop user. A similar though less-polished offering is Paint.net, but deceptively, it's software you download rather than a web app.
So, as you can see, you may be able to do everything you thought you needed Photoshop for with something less expensive. Of course, there's nothing like the real thing. Read on to see if any of our suggested applications fit your needs. If not, getting Photoshop as a subscription may be gentler on your pocketbook, at $19.99 a month.
FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP
ACDSee
$19.99
ACDSee 14 offers fast, simple operation, nice photo organization tools, and all the standard photo-fixing basics: cropping, rotating, exposure, color correction, sharpening, red-eye reduction, and blemish removal. The app can also do several Photoshop-like tricks, including applying lots of artistic effects such as the popular lomo and Orton, as well as pencil drawing and painting effects. In all, the app offers 45 effects, but falls short of Adobe Photoshop Elements in really advanced stuff like content-aware filling and photo merging. Read the full review ››
$19.99
ACDSee 14 offers fast, simple operation, nice photo organization tools, and all the standard photo-fixing basics: cropping, rotating, exposure, color correction, sharpening, red-eye reduction, and blemish removal. The app can also do several Photoshop-like tricks, including applying lots of artistic effects such as the popular lomo and Orton, as well as pencil drawing and painting effects. In all, the app offers 45 effects, but falls short of Adobe Photoshop Elements in really advanced stuff like content-aware filling and photo merging. Read the full review ››
Corel Paintshop Pro
$39.99 street
The latest version of this venerable imaging software adds some whiz-bang features like face tagging, mapping, and Instagram-like one-click photo effects. PaintShop may not be as polished and loaded with unique, mind-blowing imaging tools, but it's capable of everything a lot of users will ever need, and it's priced to sell. Read the full review ››
$39.99 street
The latest version of this venerable imaging software adds some whiz-bang features like face tagging, mapping, and Instagram-like one-click photo effects. PaintShop may not be as polished and loaded with unique, mind-blowing imaging tools, but it's capable of everything a lot of users will ever need, and it's priced to sell. Read the full review ››
GIMP
Free
The name of this longstanding open source image editing project is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Though you can use it for free to your heart's content, the project actually does accept contributions through Bitcoin and Flattr. A lot of GIMP's capabilities are courtesy of plugins, such as its support for raw camera files and custom brushes. You get the expected layers, gradients, paths, text, curves, and levels tools. And if you're running Linux or it's your most powerful image-editing option. Read the full review ››
Free
The name of this longstanding open source image editing project is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Though you can use it for free to your heart's content, the project actually does accept contributions through Bitcoin and Flattr. A lot of GIMP's capabilities are courtesy of plugins, such as its support for raw camera files and custom brushes. You get the expected layers, gradients, paths, text, curves, and levels tools. And if you're running Linux or it's your most powerful image-editing option. Read the full review ››
Paint.net
Free
Paint.net is pretty bare bones, but at least it's free, and it does give you a lot of Photoshoppy tools. It features an easy-to-use interface and an array of effects. But there's no built-in sharing tools (like every other photo editor on the planet now has), no photo-organizing tools and no Mac version. Read the full review ››
Free
Paint.net is pretty bare bones, but at least it's free, and it does give you a lot of Photoshoppy tools. It features an easy-to-use interface and an array of effects. But there's no built-in sharing tools (like every other photo editor on the planet now has), no photo-organizing tools and no Mac version. Read the full review ››
Photoshop Elements
$99.99 list
Coming from the same source as Photoshop itself, you know Elements will offer some state-of-the-art imaging software technology, and it does. Not only that, it makes a lot of effects that would take painstaking effort in Photoshop simpler, with its Guided Edits. Two other modes, Quick and Expert do as their names suggest: the first offering very basic, simple fixes and adjustments, and the latter coming closer to Photoshop itself. Read the full review ››
$99.99 list
Coming from the same source as Photoshop itself, you know Elements will offer some state-of-the-art imaging software technology, and it does. Not only that, it makes a lot of effects that would take painstaking effort in Photoshop simpler, with its Guided Edits. Two other modes, Quick and Expert do as their names suggest: the first offering very basic, simple fixes and adjustments, and the latter coming closer to Photoshop itself. Read the full review ››
Pixlr
Not Rated
Free
Load the web page at http://pixlr.com and you may be amazed that you're not looking at Photoshop: You see the same toolbar running down the left, with crop, lasso, marquee, wand (alas, no "magic"), pencil, brush, eraser, bucket, gradient, clone stamp, smudge, and lots more. You even get tooltips telling you what the tools are when you hover the cursor over them. On the right, you'll see panels for layers, history, and a navigator. The app—I mean site—offers adjustments for levels and curves, and many many effects, including water swirl, kaleidoscope, night vision, selective blurs, and mimicking HDR.
Not Rated
Free
Load the web page at http://pixlr.com and you may be amazed that you're not looking at Photoshop: You see the same toolbar running down the left, with crop, lasso, marquee, wand (alas, no "magic"), pencil, brush, eraser, bucket, gradient, clone stamp, smudge, and lots more. You even get tooltips telling you what the tools are when you hover the cursor over them. On the right, you'll see panels for layers, history, and a navigator. The app—I mean site—offers adjustments for levels and curves, and many many effects, including water swirl, kaleidoscope, night vision, selective blurs, and mimicking HDR.
Serif PhotoPlus
$89.99
With 64-bit image processing engine, Smart Selection and Edge Refinement tools, noise reduction, and a tilt-shift effect, Serif PhotoPlus is no slouch. It's just not as slick or intuitive as the competition, with no face recognition and no adjustment brushes. For your rather steep $89.99, you do however get non-destructive cropping, raw camera file support, and tools for adjusting adjust white balance and exposure, reduce noise, crop. You can even use masks to apply adjustments to specific areas of the image. Read the full review ››
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418674,00.asp
$89.99
With 64-bit image processing engine, Smart Selection and Edge Refinement tools, noise reduction, and a tilt-shift effect, Serif PhotoPlus is no slouch. It's just not as slick or intuitive as the competition, with no face recognition and no adjustment brushes. For your rather steep $89.99, you do however get non-destructive cropping, raw camera file support, and tools for adjusting adjust white balance and exposure, reduce noise, crop. You can even use masks to apply adjustments to specific areas of the image. Read the full review ››
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418674,00.asp
