 
By Eva Williams 7 days ago, Software Reviews. Designers look for GIMP alternatives to expand their toolbox, experiment with professional plug-ins or edit images directly on a smartphone. For you not to spend time searching for suitable programs on your own, I have compiled a list of the top 10 software like GIMP for beginners and professionals.
Alternatives to GIMP described in the article are suitable for editing images and creating vector illustrations. The rundown includes open source, desktop and online programs. GIMP is a cross-platform raster graphics editor using which you can edit pictures and create your own illustrations from scratch. This free photo editor has layers, custom brushes, filters, and automatic image editing tools. Besides, GIMP supports lots of plug-ins. Adobe Photoshop allows you to edit images and create graphics on your PC, tablet or smartphone.
By downloading the latest version of the program, you can synchronize the changes on all devices, work with objects selection based on AI, as well as add realistic blur effects to the picture. But they are more professional and created by well-known brands such as Phase One and Kodak. Despite the fact that Photoshop is a raster graphics editor, it also has tools for working with vector images. In Photoshop, you can move or change the opacity of a layer, while leaving the base pixels intact.
Layers allow you to combine multiple images, add text and vector graphics. Moreover, this alternative to GIMP has the Object Selection tool, thanks to which you can identify objects in scenes and automatically create selections. The instrument works well even in busy environments, in which there are many intersecting objects, for example, leaves, or complex architectural background. Krita is an open source drawing program. It has tools like brush and color pop-over to make it easier for you to create an image from scratch.
Compared to GIMP, this free drawing software has more advanced brush engines, as well as better support for a drawing tablet. Krita offers basic vector features and tools for creating animations.
Krita offers a wide selection of brushes and smudge tools that can be fully customized. It is one of the best free drawing software that allows adding transparency masks to layers. You can apply filters to the finished photo in order to change colors, add blur or the effect of an oil painting.
In Krita, you can create classic cell animation with onion skinning and key-frames. Thanks to Onion Skinning, you can see the next or the previous frame of the animation.
One layer is a white background, and another one is a new layer for the drawing so you can draw under the lines of a drawing.
Affinity Photo is a well-designed RAW photo editor. In addition to the basic photo editing tools, the program has functions for creating HDR photos and retouching images with frequency separation technique. The toolbar in the program is similar to that in Photoshop. In addition, the software supports PSD files. Affinity Photo has many professional photo editing features, such as layers, filters, layer masks, adjustment layers, and more.
Affinity Photo contains tools for retouching photos, combining images for panoramas, HDR and focusing, as well as drawing tools. You can also open vector images in. SVG and. AI , and combine vector and raster image layers in one file. However, the vector tools are somehow limited if compare with those offered in Adobe Illustrator. If you are interested in working with macros and performing batch actions, this GIMP alternative perfectly suits you.
To edit a photo, you can use lighting settings, colors, curves, LUT and gradients, but there are no features to deal with noise reduction, sharpness or chromatic aberration. You can also adjust contrast and white balance, see the edits for all layers, add glow and blur effects, outlines and overlays. It has both standard functions and advanced image editing capabilities with levels and curves.
Being one of the best photo editing software for PC , it supports working with layers, albeit at a more basic level, when compared with GIMP. The program also has a number of filters, level settings and effects. You can use Paint. NET to adjust the brightness, hue, contrast, saturation, add special effects, e. There are also instruments to eliminate the red-eye effect. Using a text editor, you can add text, while the Stamp tool helps eliminate grain.
The most notable feature discussed in many Paint. This instrument is suitable for delicate portrait editing. Luminar offers users powerful AI tools to speed up the photo editing process.
You can change the sky in the picture with a single mouse click, add objects, adjust sharpness and contrast. The program has Accent AI 2. You can fix the tone, color, change any detail. The smart filter helps recognize people in the image. This AI photo editor offers unique effects such as sunlight and the Orton effect, as well as filters to enhance brightness and color gamut of your photos. You can also cut out details from the image in 2 clicks.
In addition, this alternative to GIMP has a library function, so you can conveniently organize your photos. You can completely replace the sky in the pictures or add a flock of birds to it. Pixelmator Pro differs from other programs like GIMP because it uses the machine learning to edit photos.
Thanks to smart technologies, you can speed up layer and layouts management, selections, drawing, image restoration and RAW files processing. Being one of the best photo editing apps for Mac it offers not only standard tools, but also unique features, developed by Apple.
For example, you can export or edit images saved in the High-Efficiency Image format. This photo enlargement software has zoom tools that not only enlarge and scroll large images without delay, but also clearly display pictures at all zoom levels. You can even automatically center the images in the window. You can work in the full-screen and split-view modes, using the MacBook Pro touchpad.
It has cool features such as layer support and pressure sensitivity, while the interface will appeal to both experienced users and beginners. It looks a little outdated, but it has all basic photo editing features.
Seashore is based on GIMP technology and uses the same file format. In Seashore, you can work with layers, compress them, edit, center, link and merge. You can also copy layers to other documents, while preserving the title, transparency, offset and visibility of the layer. Among the tools, you will find textures and brushes, as well as text fields with standard fonts for Mac OS.
The Clone tool helps duplicate any part of the canvas, and the Effects tool allows you to apply various visual effects to the layer. Moreover, you can further configure them before applying.
Pixlr is suitable for both editing photos and creating graphics. Pixlr supports layers and filters, and also includes more advanced image editing tools than just cropping and resizing. You can use forms, lasso, drag and magic tools to move or delete part of the image to create compositions from several photos. Pixlr online GIMP alternative has a system of sliders for fine-tuning contrast, brightness and saturation.
But the developers went a little further, adding vibration, glare and shadows to the settings list. Pixlr has tools for creating images and text, and drawing layers. The drawing section contains three styles of brushes, as well as options for creating your own brushes. Comparing Photopea vs Photoshop in terms of interface layout, we can say that they are almost identical. You can adjust the HSL and image brightness, select and edit images in the background, etc.
In addition, it uses standard Photoshop shortcuts. Using the Healing Brush, you can improve the skin texture, making the tone uniform. The Clone Stamp tool allows cloning certain areas, while maintaining the natural look of the overall picture. This online photo editor offers a panel with actions that will simplify image editing. You can use ready-made actions or upload your own once. There are two style options for working with text — Character Style and Paragraph Style.
You can change the size and color of the text, align it, etc. It supports layers, has a lot of effects and a great text tool with various fonts. You can use the mobile version of the program, in order to work on projects anywhere.
In addition to standard features, PicMonkey has a number of professional photo editing tools. For example, you can use the bokeh effect or partially remove it from the photo with a brush.
You can use the Blemish Fix tool, remove wrinkles, change the shade of the lips or make a person slimmer. With this set of tools, you can fully control the appearance of a model in the photo. Krita Free. Luminar Online. GIMP Free.
Shotkit may earn a commission on affiliate links. Learn more. Thankfully, the photo editing tools available for iPhone in are powerful, easy to learn and a lot of fun to use.
Many of the apps below are also available for iPad and Android smartphones too. Snapseed is the best free photo editing app for iPhone.
It has multiple adjustment tools that you can use in auto mode or manually. You can do selective editing as well, thanks to its masking tool and some advanced edits such as Curves and Healing. There are many one-click solutions too that allow you to easily change the looks of your picture from grunge to black and white and others.
It also has some special effects, such as double exposure and HDR. Finally, you can also add frames and text to your images. Adobe Lightroom mobile is a portable version of the one used on desktop computers — it has all the tools, and you can sync your presets, images, etc. However, even the free Lightroom mobile version is very powerful — you can use it for capturing, organization, sharing and many of the editing features. This makes it super-easy to work across devices, with all your edits kept in sync.
Once you get the full version, you get access to the selective edits, geometry tools and the healing brush. This is one of the best photo editing apps for iPhone that allows you to work professionally because it communicates with all the Adobe apps in the Creative Cloud ecosystem. Pixelmator Photo is a desktop-class photo editor app, and it supports raw formats from over cameras.
You can use the ML Enhance feature for the smart auto-adjustment for quick edits. You can later fine-tune your image, or you can do everything on your own using all the non-destructive photo editing tools. The app offers a machine-learning denoise tool to reduce noise and image-compression artefacts automatically. You can also choose from more than 30 color adjustments and nine unique preset groups to give your images a creative touch.
Currently, Adobe decided to merge all three photo editing apps in a more powerful version of Photoshop Express. If you have any of the other two apps, you can continue to use them — but they are not in the app store anymore. Photoshop Camera is still a separate editing app that allows you to change the looks of your picture before you make it. Among the many adjustments you can make to edit pictures, you can select multiple objects to apply edits selectively or make cut-outs.
You can also add blur or remove noise, make a perspective correction and even do makeup transfer for your beauty pictures. Adobe Photoshop Express allows you to use professional editing tools and fun features for your social feed. For example, you can retouch facial features for a perfect portrait, but you can also turn your face into a cartoon. Adobe Photoshop Express is one of the best photo editing apps for iPhone, and you can use it together with other apps from the Creative Cloud.
The editing options include exposure and color correction, background removal , blur background with an AI smart selection tool, selfie retouching tools, straighten images, multiple photo filters, etc. Your edited photos can become memes and Instagram stories easily. The video editor has an intuitive interface that allows you to add music — your own or from the in-app library, trim and crop your videos, use the smart video merger, and apply filters.
The free app version has ads that can become annoying — but you can use all the functions. For a free-ad experience, you need a Gold membership that you can pay weekly, monthly or yearly. VSCO is one of the best photo editing apps for iPhone with a social media community. It has the same features as other editing apps, plus a huge range of filters developed by influencers and professional photographers.
With VSCO, you can also edit video and give free rein to your creativity by layering images, video, and shapes. Most of the filters the app offers are paid, but you can still use it as a free photo editor with ten included presets — and you can participate in the community. Carbon is the best photo editing app if you like black and white photography.
You can make beautiful monochrome pictures without any photo editing knowledge, thanks to its minimal design. Simply tap over any of the 58 black and white filters and choose the one you like best.
You can also add textures and borders to your photos. TouchRetouch is a photo editing app is dedicated to remove unwanted objects. Instead, you can use it for portrait photos to remove blemishes and create smooth skin , also for your travel photos removing tourists in the back, etc. You can do these things with the healing tool of many editing apps. The results are surprisingly accurate, so for only 2 bucks, it could be an essential photo editing app to add to your tool set.
It comes with more than textures you can easily apply to your photos. Each one is added in a separate layer so you can customize the opacity and choose one of the 12 blending modes. You can add virtually unlimited layers and come back to adjust each of them as many times as you want because it works non-destructively.
Also, you do have some photo editing features if you prefer to take matters into your own hands. You can save your workflow and duplicate your edits in other photos or share them with other users. In the same way, you can import formulas from other users and use them in your photos. All in all, this is a fantastic photo editing app. Superimpose X is one of the best photo editing apps to create photo composites and visual art.
This app allows you to create amazing works of art composed of multiple images using masks and layers. You can work with up to 24 layers and combine them using any of the 18 blending modes and controlling the opacity — it also has 16 different adjustment layers.
You can use separate masks for each layer and save them on a masking library. Multiple masking tools make your selections more precise, and an automatic AI tool helps you mask people out. You can use the built-in shadow creation tool to make your compositions more realistic. To finish your graphic work, you can add text that can be manipulated with zoom, blur, warp, and more. If you want to keep the layers outside the app, you can export your projects as PSD.
SKRWT is specifically developed to correct horizontal and vertical lines distorted by perspective. Using 4PNTS, you can manually adjust your photo by dragging each corner separately. MRRW offers four mirror effects to control the symmetry in your photos. Depending on what iPhone photo editing app is being used, there are many ways a pro could edit their photos. To keep things simple, since every iPhone owner has the Photos app, here are the basic steps when editing an image:.
Before you even get to using photo editing tools, there are several steps to take to ensure your iPhone takes better photos. In this article, we selected the best photo editing apps for you to choose from. Some of the best editing apps to get rid of blemishes are Snapseed, TouchRetouch, Photoshop Express and Lightroom — although many others have this feature.
VSCO is also one of the most popular filter editing apps because of its social media feature. It has a Library to organize your photos, on-device machine learning, photo editing tools and some graphic tools to draw or write. I hope you like our selection of the best photo editing apps for iPhone. You should find that most are actually also available for other mobile devices, such as Android phones, iPads and Android tablets.
As you can see, some of them are multi-purpose photo editing apps, while others are specialized in certain edits. Others are professional photo editing apps, and others are one-click solutions.
In the comments, let us know which ones you think are the best photo editing apps for iPhone and what you like about them. Thanks for reading! Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector. Enter your email to be sent today's Welcome Gift: 19 Photography Tools. Best Photo Editing Apps for iPhone.
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