Photoshop Alternatives: Choose Your Pick

Photoshop well-known tool among people in the graphics and photography industry. It’s one of the most popular and most used adobe products out there. As for its usage, well, those who are familiar with it know that whether it’s retouching or editing or any other works related to images no other tool is better than photoshop. But why?

Well, it’s natural for those who have never used it would wonder and ask such a thing. But those who have used it have to agree that it’s one of the best editing software out there. It’s not like those pre-effect ready software where you would just choose an effect and play with its adjusting slider. No, it’s not built for such trivial work. With its extensive tools which not only allow one to edit or retouch but also an element and model them in such a way that you model the image anyway, you can imagine. In other words, it’s a tool that allows you to give your imagination a visual representation.

But over the years it has been updated various times and with the mixture of human imagination, its usage has gone beyond the scope of photo retouch or background change or adding elements. Now the sky is the limit.

Not only are you able to work with photos but also create graphics with its various tools. Also with its powerful filters who would need pre-made effects set that consists of limited selection and aren’t suitable for all images. Here you can make as many effects you desire tailored around specific images.

But sadly not everyone is capable of doing so. Knowing how to use a tool and utilizing it are two different things. If you have two people recreate the same effect using the techniques you would be amazed that they might even look completely different. There are a lot of factors that add to this. If one were experienced while the other was a rookie that it’s natural for how they apply the tools would be different. None the less it’s a great tool for photographers as well as graphic designers. And with all these additions and features it has allowed the skilled users to make a living with it. Whether it’s working on a studio or earn from home online through freelancing it’s possible. You won’t believe how in-demand such people are. You can even earn by showcasing your skills on streaming sites where you can stream your talent and creativity with it.

Having said that all these features would make it heavy as well as consume a large amount of RAM to run its features smoothly. Some machines with low ram aren’t able to cope with its rendering thus making it difficult to work with. Thus people look for alternatives that can allow them to do the same things as photoshop but put less strain on their machine. And there are some which can mimic those basic tools. But they don’t have all the features. Still, they are with studying. Let’s learn about a few of them for preference.

# Pixlr

This is an online free editor that lives on the web. So you can already guess that it doesn’t require any installation and can run on any machine as long as it has access to the internet and a browser. It contains almost all the basic features that photoshop has. But some of those features require you to upgrade to its premium version to use them. But non the less for basic editing its free version is more than enough.

# Canva

Another well-known web-based tool that also runs on a browser but what makes it more stand out is its pre-built templates which are a big help for designers who are new and don’t know where to begin or don’t know what to draw. But with its huge collection of templates for banner design, card design, and many more it’s quite useful. It also includes all the basic tools to do needed adjustments to the images to your liking. But like pixlr some exclusive tools and templates aren’t accessible through the free version. You would need to pay a certain amount of fee to access them.

# Sketch

Well, the ones who are familiar with it are definitely mac users. As this software is only available for mac. It’s not free but it’s a one-time purchase whereas for photoshop you have to pay a monthly or annual subscription. Which if you stop paying your photoshop will stop working as well as you won’t be able to receive any future updates or upgrade to newer versions whatsoever. But that’s not the case for sketch. Once purchased you would get a lifetime of updates and upgrades.

Conclusion

These are only some of the alternatives there are a lot more. Like Gimp, PicMonkey, Photscape, and many more. It’s up to you to choose which goes well with the pictures that you have in mind. To get the best results you can use multiple editors and use their strong suits. Besides if you are an intermediate use then using this side would allow you to learn new techniques that you can apply much better with the tools in photoshop thus improving the quality of the graphics.