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  • It really depends on which features you are looking for. If you just want a solid editor with layers and plugins then gimp is pretty good. You can also try Krita for something a little less cumbersome.

    Unfortunately most of the really nice editors are closed source and only mac/windows

    • Krita is heavily oriented for digital painting. But it is a very solid editor too. The interface took some time to get used to. Though I like it.

      But absolutely, good is subjective. It really depends on your needs. If you're looking to edit spicy memes anything could work. If you're looking for non destructive workflow GIMP and krita are starting to implement that. And if you're looking for traditional publishing specific support, good CMYK, gamut, etc. Not so much to my knowledge? If you just want familiarish.... Gimp these days can imitate the classic Photoshop interface okay.

      • Krita has CMYK, and very good non-destructive editing these days. It's my preferred photo editor, including for the occasional magazine ad work I do. It also has great support for PS files, including smart layers, etc, plus it has layer effects, masking, filter layers, GPU accelerated canvas, and G'MIC support covers a lot of the fancier pbotoshop stuff like content-aware fill. IMO, for the workflow and interface alone, it's leagues ahead of G***.

  • If you want to try some hacking:

    Install GIMP beta from Flathub-beta (see my repo list which contains it as an example

    And try to add the theme PhotoGimp

    As Gimp 3.0 is nearly done, Photogimp likely needs an update as its made for GTK2.

    GIMP 3 introduces some necessary features that are a base requirement for graphics design, nondestructive filters and color profiles (if you want to print)

  • When it comes to Photoshop, there is alternative, and there is good. Unfortunately a truly good alternative doesn't exist.

  • While GIMP is my favorite general purpose image editor, it lacks a few very important features. In example there are no simple and easy tools to create and manipulate shapes, lacks any non destructive diting features and layers. But they are working on it and 1 or 2 months a big update is coming, with some major improvements in non destructive layer features.

    Krita is also an excellent tool. While it has a focus and marketing on painting, it is still good enough to edit any image similar to GIMP. Even the popular effects addon GMIC can be used. There are bunch of non destructive effect layers, directly integrated vectors with enough shape tools. But on the other hand the text tool is abysmal, compared to GIMP.

    It highly depends on what you expect from a Photoshop alternative and what you want do.

43 comments