Free alternatives to Photoshop / Lightroom etc

[Arn X Treme]

Hi,

 

Apologies if this has been asked before but the search results were a pain to sort through. 

 

My youngest nephew is looking into getting into a bit of media projects as something to do before he starts his GCSE revision next year. 

 

Obviously at his age he has no job so no income as such, so i am looking for free alternatives to the above software is anything out there worth mentioning to him?

 

TIA.

 

 

[milko]

Here's a lightroom alternative:

https://www.darktable.org/

 

GIMPshop is a free Photoshop thing:

https://www.gimpshop.com/downloads

(or just plain old GIMP: https://www.gimp.org/)

 

Inkscape is like Adobe Illustrator:

https://inkscape.org/

 

Davinci Resolve does a lot of video effects/editing stuff (might be a bit much at pre-GCSE level!)

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

[Arn X Treme]

2 minutes ago, milko said:

Here's a lightroom alternative:

https://www.darktable.org/

 

GIMPshop is a free Photoshop thing:

https://www.gimpshop.com/downloads

(or just plain old GIMP: https://www.gimp.org/)

 

Inkscape is like Adobe Illustrator:

https://inkscape.org/

 

Davinci Resolve does a lot of video effects/editing stuff (might be a bit much at pre-GCSE level!)

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

 

Amazing! 

 

Thank you very much i shall pass these on.

[milko]

I wonder if something like Blender is also worth mentioning, 3D stuff. Again potentially way OTT at this level but if the interest is there it could be really fun. I was dicking around with a pirated 3D Studio Max at something like that age, maybe a year or two older. Much easier nowadays!

https://www.blender.org/

 

[MarkN]

There's also Krita for a free paint program - very highly regarded. I've got it installed, but have never used it (just haven't found the time).

 

https://krita.org/en/

[RiK]

Not free, but considerable more affordable and no subscription to worry about, it's well worth looking at Affinity Photo / Designer 

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ 

[Loki]

Photopea is essentially a browser based version of Photoshop: https://www.photopea.com/

[bradigor]

2 hours ago, Loki said:

Photopea is essentially a browser based version of Photoshop: https://www.photopea.com/

 

Not had a chance to look properly, but impressed. Handled a large amount of layers and smart objects remarkably well. Will need to dig deeper and see what else it can do. As could be useful at times if I am needing to work on someone else's machine. 

[Qazimod]

I'm a pretty late convert to GIMP but it's really useful just for the handful of things in PS trials that I ended up using - layers, fuzzy select, masks etc. It's definitely worth a look if you want to add a bunch of functionality to your image editing.  

[pastry]

If he likes design he should try Figma

https://www.figma.com/

 

It's my main tool now for web / app work and has basically kicked Sketch, Illustrator, Adobe XD and Photoshop squarely in the nuts.

 

FWIW if he's on Mac I have to say the basic tools you get in Photos for editing are now reasonably robust. It's no Lightroom, but you can get a lot more from your images using it. 

[bradigor]

I use Photoshop because it is paid for by someone else (for now). But have been testing out Photopea for some basic editing and I can't wrap my head around how this is possible as an in browser app. It struggles with some of the selection based stuff that PS can do, but overall it seems incredible. 

 

If you compare the new Object Selection Tool between PS 2020 and Photopea, you can see a difference. But still does a decent enough job as a starting point. 

 

[TomatoConvenienceStore]

Just saw this thread and thought I'd add that although I have used Photoshop/Gimp extensively in the past, for 99% of the time, I just use https://pixlr.com/editor

 

Pretty much covers most uses I need it for.

 

I've used it for years and I.t's free and all online and done in browser.

 

Edit: I use the desktop version. there is some basic mobile version of the site which I've never used, so can't comment on that