Image Editing Software Recommendations?

[mobius017]

Can anyone share recommendations for image-editing software? I've been using Corel for awhile (which I think is relatively similar to PhotoShop), but they've moved to a subscription model.

I'm not really a visual artist, so I think something like Clip Studio Paint is probably not quite right for me. When I do image editing, it's mostly combination/slight modification of existing images. For example, creating my avatar, or the Miku vaccine image, or the userbars for the Miku fanclub.

At the moment, I'm thinking the best option seems to be GiMP, although I've heard it can be a little un-user-friendly. I don't mind paying for the software as long as it's not too expensive, but I also don't do a lot of image editing, so something really expensive or subscription-based doesn't interest me. Of course, I'd like it to be decent software--something that works well, ideally is relatively easy/intuitive, and doesn't crash. (Is that too tall an order?)

Thanks!

 

[Luxie]

Okay, so not Photoshop. My sister uses Pixlr X for image editing, and it’s free and web based. I’d test it out.
That being said, I’ve also heard positive reviews about GiMP too.

 

[Luxie]

Okay, so not Photoshop. My sister uses Pixlr X for image editing, and it’s free and web based. I’d test it out.
That being said, I’ve also heard positive reviews about GiMP too.

Here’s a quick test I did.

 

[pico]

I've never personally found I've found the niche for graphics editing outside of PS.
I own Clip Studio 1 and found that it will do some things really well, but is a nightmare for other things. Basically, no matter what I do, I keep getting pushed back toward PS which I'm not a fan of.

However, Krita does do a lot of the things I want, despite falling prey to KDE syndrome (poor sorting of many powerful options).

If you haven't tried Krita, you should really give it a shot. Some people feel overwhelmed at first, and the layering system is slightly different from PS, but it is easy to learn with a cursory glance at the manual. It should be very easy to use for your use case. The only thing preventing me from really fine-tuning it and running full-time are some slight issues with my WM and drivers on linux.

 

[___]

It's important to not conflate painting and editing software, while Krita and CSP1 are powerful painting tools, they're not specialized in editing and weaker in that department.

Gimp is popular PS alternative and good for editing, Photopea is complete recreation of Photoshop in browser and it's free

Photopea | Online Photo Editor

Photopea Online Photo Editor lets you edit photos, apply effects, filters, add text, crop or resize pictures. Do Online Photo Editing in your browser for free!

www.photopea.com

 

[pico]

It's important to not conflate painting and editing software, while Krita and CSP1 are powerful painting tools, they're not specialized in editing and weaker in that department.

I agree it's an important distinction, but a lot of painting software can still perform really powerful photo editing operations. After all, software like GIMP is still capable of painting. Which is to say, both photo editors and painting programs are raster editors at their core, just targeted towards different audiences with different feature sets-- but also with a lot of overlapping features. I would argue Krita is a stronger tool in a lot of areas than some free purpose-built photo editing software like GIMP. I don't know anything about Photopea, so I won't speak to it, but is it actually a complete recreation? (Like, feature-wise? I ask because if it does compare on a feature level, that's really exciting.)

 

[Silver1063]

Affinity Photo is a decent choice if you are looking for a one time purchase model, all updates for 1.x are free, until 2.0 then there will be an upgrade fee (though there hasn't been any news about a 2.0 release in the near future)

edit for future readers: affinity 2 launched litterally a month later

 

[___]

I agree it's an important distinction, but a lot of painting software can still perform really powerful photo editing operations. After all, software like GIMP is still capable of painting. I would argue Krita is a stronger tool in a lot of areas than some free purpose-built photo editing software like GIMP. I don't know anything about Photopea, so I won't speak to it, but is it actually a complete recreation?

Well then we can just agree to disagree.

Even if Krita may be stronger tool in other areas ( which I'm not gonna argue for or against ), unless you can make use of them, they're just clutter in and already bad UI that expects of you to be panting in it first and foremost. Hence I recommend something that was purpose-built even if it may lack in other areas, it doesn't in the ones being asked about.

In the end it's up to the OP to make a decision, just sharing my perspective why I personally wouldn't recommend Krita, I think both of our points are of value so he can make his own opinion to see what's right for him, neither of us is wrong, it just depends what you're going for.

And to the best of my knowledge yes!

 

[WyndReed]

I’ve been using Gimp for years and while it is kinda clunky, it does get easier to use the more you use it.

 

[pico]

Well then we can just agree to disagree.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to start an argument. I guess I just misunderstood the intent of your message. If you don't like Krita because it's too cluttered, I don't disagree. I talk about that in my initial post, too. But I really do think Krita is a powerful tool for photo editing-- it has a number of photo-editing and especially color specific features that most editors in general don't! I just felt the need to stick up for one of my favorite editors, especially because it's completely free software with no strings attached.

There are a lot of people out there working hard on raster graphics software, so I think it's great that there's so many options.

After looking into photopea, it looks like it is not a feature-to-feature recreation, but it looks like it does what it sets out to do really well! And the workflow is quite similar, so I'm glad to have heard about it. I just wish it wasn't a webapp </3

 

[___]

I never saw it as an argument, we're just exchanging opinions, it's ok to disagree on those.

If I may have undermined how powerful Krita's photo editing capabilities are then I'm sorry, still I think the heavy specialization Krita has in painting needs to be stated, yeah I personally found it frustrating due to cluttered UI, but I also referred to the features Krita has as clutter to a person depending on what purpose they wanna use Krita for, and if it's photo editing specifically, the clutteredness increases and makes the learning curve even steeper than what it already is for painting alone. And it may come to a point where it may not be worth it learning if that's the only purpose one will be using it for, hence I point to alternatives if that happens.

That's not up for me to decide of course, but it's a very real con, and I think it's good both of us are listing the pros and cons!

It's true! So amazing there are more options!

 

[MagicalMiku]

for light image editing you can use paint.net , while for more advanced editing gimp is the good choice ^^ both are free software and easy to use (especially paint.net is more like corel software).
gimp needs its approach to be understood, is very powerful and can get very good results, the best thing to do is to just download, install it and start using it ^-^

 

[lIlI]

Affinity is another popular Photoshop alternative I've heard good things about from my graphic designer friends!

£50, no subscription

 

[mobius017]

Thank you very much for all you help, everyone! I have a number of options to look into!

A question about Krita: from what I can see online, it looks like it doesn't handle transparent GIFs. Is that right?

(For anyone unfamiliar, transparent GIFs are images with a transparent background so you can see whatever's underneath; for example, one of the Miku fanclub banners used one so you could see through it to the background color of your chosen VVN theme:

It's not like I use that feature all the time, but especially when making images that can go on the web, I'd like to not lose that capability.)

 

[pico]

A question about Krita: from what I can see online, it looks like it doesn't handle transparent GIFs. Is that right?

I haven't checked the file format stuff in a while, but it might not. It could have been added recently because animation features have been a big push. It does support transparent PNG, though! Which is probably a better choice for static images.

 

[iXari3l]

I'm probably late, and saying something others have also said.

But here's a list:

• Photopea (online free alternative to Photoshop, works literally like Photoshop itself)
• Paint.net (free, it's like a fusion between Photoshop and MS Paint)
• Paint Tool SAI (unsure if it's actually free or you have to pay, but here it is anyways)
• Pixlr (online Photoshop-like thing? There's been a while since I last checked)
• Clip Studio Paint (paid, but very good, it's of my faves)
• Autodesk Sketchbook (unsure if it's free/paid or still up for dl)
• Krita (weird to get used to, but FREE and lots of tools for drawing and photo editing)
• ibisPaint X (not sure how it works on pc, sorry! but its free for mobile)
• FireAlpaca (free, good tools, easy to use!)
• Medibang Paint (free, kinda like FireAlpaca, a bit more modern, same layout, some things are different)
• Jump Paint (litreally Medibang Paint, but light mode)
• Drawpile (free, simple, and you can go online and draw with people too!)
• aggie.io (same as Drawpile, but on browser)
• PicsArt (mobile app, pretty good for what it is, tons of filters and stuff for free, there's also the option to pay)

I'll be updating more probably, there's some I forgot to add here right now

(EDIT: added a few more)

 

[Blue Of Mind]

Late to the party, but I've always relied on GIMP if I need to do something more strenuous than editing a screencap (I just use MS Paint for that lol). It's true that it has a clunky UI, but if you know what you're doing with the tools, you can create Photoshop-tier results. There are also plenty of tutorials online for creating certain effects with GIMP, and you can download additional stuff like fonts and brushes. GIMP can also open Photoshop files if need be. (That was a godsend for me back when I had a DeviantART account!)

 

[iXari3l]

Late to the party, but I've always relied on GIMP if I need to do something more strenuous than editing a screencap (I just use MS Paint for that lol). It's true that it has a clunky UI, but if you know what you're doing with the tools, you can create Photoshop-tier results. There are also plenty of tutorials online for creating certain effects with GIMP, and you can download additional stuff like fonts and brushes. GIMP can also open Photoshop files if need be. (That was a godsend for me back when I had a DeviantART account!)

Ah yes! Now that you mention the thing, DeviantART is a really good resource for when you need any kind of thing!
A new font? Some random filter or effect? A certain shape or texture? Need that new cool brush over there?
Well DeviantART is the ultimate place! Almost everything is free and high quality

Also tutorials are never a few in there. There are like, literally tons of tutorials for anything, even if you need to rename some dumb setting(?)