When it comes to editing photos with the power of Photoshop without paying the subscription fees of Adobe Creative Cloud (which will run you $22.99 per month to use just Photoshop), your choices are a bit limited. Affinity by Canva is a good choice for most people, unless you’re a bit more advanced and want something that feels more like full-fledged Photoshop with expert-level control over layers and workflows. Another option, which has been around for years (all the way back to 1995, in fact, when it was known as the General Image Manipulation Program), is open-source GIMP (which has a plethora of plugins to customize the experience), which I’ve been using and loving as a replacement to Photoshop (for which there are many alternatives beyond GIMP) to do my photo editing and light graphics work.
Making GIMP feel more like Photoshop
PhotoGIMP is a simple patch worth installing
While GIMP has a similar feel to Photoshop out of the box, I found the layout of the tools overall not to fit the muscle-memory I had developed in Photoshop. Using a free patch called PhotoGIMP, you can get much closer to the default look and feel of Photoshop in just a few clicks. Just head on over to the PhotoGIMP GitHub, download the right files, whether for macOS, Windows, or Linux, and then apply the patch to the correct app data folder on your PC.
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Better screenshots, an improvement to Spotlight, and powerful image editing.
While this step is completely unnecessary to fully leverage the power of GIMP for photo editing, I found it helped me feel more at home, and it only took a couple of minutes to apply. Also, since PhotoGIMP is open source (like GIMP itself), you can feel confident about the integrity and security of the app itself.
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Windows, macOS, Linux
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Simon Budig
Editing in GIMP
Lots of manual controls for photo editing
My workflow for editing images is usually pretty simple and involves multiple fine-tuned manual controls that I would use in Photoshop, and I was right at home on GIMP. The first thing I always do is adjust the tonal range and color balance by using the Curves adjustment. You can get to that in GIMP by going to Colors -> Curves. This allows me to bring up the detail in the fence in the above photo and to really emphasize the deep orange color in the sky. In addition, I like to adjust the exposure to further increase contrast by going to Colors -> Exposure, where I increase the black level slightly. I also turn up color saturation by going to Colors -> Saturation, and tweaking the levels until the image really pops.
Lastly, since most phones take too-cool photos, I always warm photos by going to Colors -> Color Temperature, where I bring up the warm tones for a more natural and pleasing look. Then I use the Export As tool in GIMP to export a full-quality JPEG. From the standpoint of manually editing a photo, GIMP is full-featured, and I couldn’t find anything that was missing when compared to Photoshop for my particular image editing workflow, which is admittedly pretty basic.
Another thing missing with GIMP (which can be solved with certain plugins) is native AI features. I especially enjoyed the AI integrations from the also-free Affinity, which has generative fill, background removal, and more, which GIMP is lacking out of the box.
Photoshop users will feel right at home
GIMP also works great for image work
Sometimes I need to make a quick thumbnail for an article or video. GIMP has almost every tool and capability that I’m used to in Photoshop. Whether adding and organizing layers, manipulating and stylizing text, or using keyboard shortcuts to quickly change tools, GIMP can keep up and produce great results. My main concern is with performance: even on my powerful MacBook Pro, the performance of GIMP was noticeably worse than Photoshop.
Power users can customize GIMP fully
Tools and keyboard shortcuts are fully customizable
As is the case with regular Photoshop, GIMP lets you customize your tools and easily see the associated keyboard shortcuts, which are also fully customizable by going to GIMP -> Keyboard Shortcuts. The level of control you have to specify dozens of keyboard shortcuts is fantastic and will satisfy even the most advanced users.
My main concern is with performance: even on my powerful MacBook Pro, the performance of GIMP was noticeably worse than Photoshop.
GIMP still delivers for photo editing
I must admit, while I’ve been aware of GIMP for years, I’ve mostly defaulted to Photoshop because of its unparalleled level of control and performance. While GIMP’s performance leaves a bit to be desired, overall it’s fast enough to make it my photo editor of choice, especially as I no longer want to pay hundreds of dollars per year for Photoshop. And after installing the PhotoGIMP plugin, I felt right at home from a layout and functionality perspective versus Photoshop.
