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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***.
I was unaware of the CMYK support. So sounds like maybe apart from gamut tools etc. It's getting fairly close these days which is good to hear. I've generally just been using it for drawing and painting with a little bit of editing. Though I still feel more comfortable editing in Gimp at this point.
Yea, it really is very good. I'm not sure what you mean by gamut tools, but there are out of gamut warnings, gamut masks, histograms, etc.
Generally, I'll do RAW editing in something like Darktable, and then do actual retouching work in Krita.
If you want to do Photo Manipulation, GIMP is your best option.
If you wanna do digital painting, Krita is for you.
First choice GIMP. Then, Digikam has an image editor that provides a number of tools. Not as detailed and sophisticated as GIMP but does most things needed.
I think Digikam is closer to Lightroom than to Photoshop
Krita does the job for 90% of the edits I ever do.
Photopea -- online, but can be used as a PWA. One of the best!
What a coincidence, I was looking at the same thing today. I kept seeing recommendations for Affinity Photo, apparently it has a wide range of features for both Windows and macOS users. It's got PSD file support, RAW support, masking, layering, retouching, blemish removal, curving, and a comprehensive set of 16-bit filters.
It's around $50 I think but you own the license forever.
EDIT : I just noticed that this is the Open Source community so I just wanted to mention that Affinity is clearly not that.
I'll vouch for Affinity. Runs pretty well in Wine, too.
what? since when?
last time i checked getting it to run with wine was a major hassle next to impossible.
Well, Bottles anyway, and Affinity Photo v1.10.6.1665.
Here's the custom recipe I use (with caffe-8.21): https://privatebin.net/?5f0ccc4d96c9f386#8MRRLF6WkZ8zjPWDFucuwsiCGSg9mdSVwcF3YqfqFarU
Some minor rendering issues, but perfectly usable.
They are absolute garbage with wine. I think the only version that worked was the very first release.
Unless you're incredibly deep into technical functions, Krita is 100% the way to go. Gimp is not horrible, but I have a bias against it, because i found it ridiculously unintuitive and hard to learn to use
If you're really used to photoshop and don't mind using a webapp I recommend photopea.com
The UI is super easy to pick up if you're used to photoshop, and for my purposes it has all the functionality photoshop has. Only downside is it's a webapp with no local client available as far as I know.
Photopea is not FOSS.
You right, I missed the community this was posted in.
The GIMP has been timelessly heralded. I personally just put up with closed-source IrfanView and Paint.NET, personally.
If you're into Paint.NET, check out Pinta; it's basically Paint.NET (inspired by it) but open source and works on all 3 major OS's.
Wow, thanks, I'd never heard of this before! I'll pick it up.
Looking for a photo editor more than a painting tool
I don't think anyone uses Gimp for painting or drawing. It has the filters and extensions and tools which make it useful for cleaning up or editing photographic imagery.
If I'm looking to paint or draw, I fire up Krita, not Gimp.
There's Darktable for handling photos, as well, but that's an alternative for Lightroom, not Photoshop.
Good news, the GNU Image Manipulation Program is designed for manipulating photos
GIMP and darktable work well for photo editing.
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)
The closest is photopea. Not gimp, I'm afraid.
gimp
/thread
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.
GIMP is the best you're gonna get unfortunately.
If you just want something that's free as in price, honestly the best thing (in terms of functionality only) is pirated photoshop natively on windows. I've found PS is kinda crap on Wine.
Photopea is proprietary so at that point you may as well just pirate photoshop, at least then you're getting the real thing.
What do you mean by "unfortunately"?
As in it's unfortunate that there isn't a foss photo editor better than gimp (which us quite clunky and awkward to use)
The lastest beta has great UI and feature tho
Dude what the hell??? GIMP has a lot of time in development, also, if you really have a problem with the UI, why don't you report that issue to the Devs instead of whining about it in here?
Why are you being this defensive? I didn't say GIMP was bad, I like it and I use it regularly. I just don't think it's better than Photoshop is all. I'm sure the devs are actively trying to improve the UI too. This seems like a massive overreaction
Pixelmator is nice if you want a nice interface. Not all functionalities are here but it’s nicer to look at than Gimp.
It's not FOSS and only available for macOS