Looking for free photoshop alternative

Hi.

I need a program for photo editing. If possible, as close to photoshop as it could be, so if I need help I can ask people who use photoshop.
Thanks in advance.

 

I have and use PS/CS2, myself, but have tried two free alternatives: GIMP and IrfanView.

 

They will love you for that (not). Try

http://www.gimpshop.com/

 

Thanks for that link. I'll try it. It seems that it's what I was looking for.

 

GIMP is certainly the closest you can get to PS. Even the menu layout is done so that it replicates Photoshop's. But the everlasting lack of CMYK color space support simply makes GIMP a joke for any serious (prepress/print) editing and not really an "alternative" to PS. iirc, it was rather slow as well when I tried it (not the latest version) and not very stable when multiple layers are used. But hey, at least it's free!
I have also tried PhotoFiltre (free AND paid Studio version) and both lacked the same thing (CMYK). Not to mention viewers like Irfan or XNview lol But I guess for simple home needs (correction of digital imagery), GIMP would suffice.
Oh yes, one more thing - what the heck is going on with that GIMPshop forums? lol

 

GIMP.
You shouldn't be looking for a close match, you should (imho) try to first look at the perceived 'best', and try them for a while to make your judgement.

Seer, was it slow starting, or running a task? I never saw it drag, it works wonders here - only, obviously, i don't do anything heavy or demanding.
Maybe it's the Windows port?

 

Paint.Net, its native x64 and scales multi core CPUs, so if you have a 4GB+ system with dual or quad core, you won't find a faster and better editor, it has all the necessary features of Adobe minus bloat and has an impressive array of plugins as well. I have done side by side tests on similar machines with a 10MP RAW file and Paint.Net blows Adobe to weeds. Adobe is x32 and that hinders it a lot.

 

Have heard of Paint.net, but always thought it was more of a Paint replacement. Didn't knew it was a full photo editor.
Will try it. Thanks

 

HURST,

I'm not sure if this will fit your performance needs but Paint.NET may just shift your gears.

From their website:

I am not qualified to say if it competes or not but I would not be surprised at all if it does because it features a number of after-market enhancements (plug-ins).

 

Let the separations done by your customer i.e. Photographers make pictures and mainly deliver data in RGB space adobe 1998 To do separations yourself is tricky,you have to have all the profiles ( proofer,printer,press) and thats not easy.If your customer demands that simply deny and explain why.

If you are involved in people,fashion or product photography be sure to have a colormanaged workflow.

Photographers are picture makers and not DTP specialists or involved in press preparation. IMHO thats not their job.

 

another vote for Paint.NET

 

I'm not into fancy edits or motion GIFs. Just some basic stuff to make a good photo look a little better. The photo apps I like (and use)... All free:

IrfanView (all image files default to here. It opens fast!)
FastStone Image Viewer (Good for minor fixes and decent organization)
Paint.NET (Nice for editing beyond FastStone. Requires .NET Framework to run.)
PhotoFiltre (Also nice for editing beyond FastStone)
Picasa2 (Excellent for organization and has a few somewhat unique (for a freebie app), simple editing tools too.)

 

Are you talking about Photoshop Elements, or just Photoshop (CS3)? If you're talking about CS3, then it is fair to assume that Photoshop will be better than Paint.NET.

 

I am talking about CS 3, install both Paint.Net and CS3 on a x64 OS multi core machine with 4GB+ RAM and check out the difference in speed for yourself. Of course Paint.Net has less features and plugins than PS but the plugins bring it closer than ever.

 

Lack of support for 64-bit is one of Photoshop's biggest shortcoming, though it will be addressed by CS4. Plugins also extends Photoshop's functionality. For professional work, however, Photoshop really is the best application to use.

But since the OP asked about a free Photoshop alternative, I would say go for Paint.NET.

 

I am certainly no expert on photo editing software but I use Paint.NET with a few plug-ins installed and it does pretty much everything I need.

 

There is no alternative to Photoshop in terms of industrial strength,nothing comes even close.

For home,family and hobby pictures,others would be good enough though.

With the upcoming PS CS 4 64bit on a 64 bit XP or Vista,it should fly,cause it can much more address memory space,in x86 systems restricted to 2 gig.

to clarify a bit: because of the huge address space that PS can address(allocate) for its own,everything can lifted in memory,including PS itself,plugins and the swapfile so every action is only done in memory,there is no need to write to disk,hence i expect that we can get a remarkable speed gain,round about 20 %.

So the main advantage with x64 is that PS can use huge quantities of memory up to 200 times more then on x86 OS.

 

There is a great french program (that also exists in an English version).
PhotoFiltre that you can download for a 30 days trial period. If you like it,
it cost you only a fractal of what PhotoShop will cost.
Check out at: http://photofiltre.free.fr/
/Don

PS. There is a great "How to" in this comunity: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=141853&highlight=photofiltre
/DS

 

Its free?

 

Yes, it's free.
Further more it does have several plug-ins, as well as tutorials.

Another one worth a look is PhotoBie.

 

Here is one that I found just recently. Looks exactly like earlier versions of Photoshop, and it is free. I've played around with it a bit and it is very impressive. It doesn't take forever to load, although I haven't tried it with any plugins yet.

http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?en_version

 

Wow! Thanks to all for all the suggestions! I don't think I'll have time to try them all.
For now I'm trying Paint.Net and Photofiltre. That Wilders tutorial is very usefull.
Maybe someday I'll end up doing my own artwork...

 

It was dragging with multiple layers, I don't mind slow startup. Well, the Photoshop ain't quick in starting too. I tried GIMPshop 2.1 i believe, it was on Vista.

I thought of it too. I tried GIMP in Ubuntu (Studio) recently, it was actually flying. Haven't tried any serious editing, but GIMP initally had much smoother feel than it's Windows port. You may be right...

 

It is not very tricky if you have the right profiles. My point was that you cannot put GIMPshop or any of the mentioned editors in that equation.

 

You may also try GIMP, not GIMPshop
Live with the differences. I bet you'll find a reasoning for the layout with time.

If it's still slow, remember it's not slow in Debian