Gimp 2.8.23 Download For (Windows + Mac) Free [2018] (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and raster that is open-source editor[6] used for image retouching and modifying, free-form drawing, converting between various image formats, and more specialized tasks. The interface that is friendly to the app lets you stack different modules into. Below are some of the best free photo editors for Windows and Mac OS X that will help you make the most of your photos, whatever your abilities. GIMP: the free photo editor for pros. GIMP is the most comparable free alternative to Photoshop, because of its extensive and advanced editing options.
There are dozens of free photo editors out there, so we've hand-picked the very best so you can make your pictures look amazing without paying a penny.
We've spent hours putting a huge range of photo editors to the test, and picked out the best ones for any level of skill and experience. From powerful software packed with features that give Photoshop a run for its money to simple tools that give your pictures a whole new look with a couple of clicks, there's something for everyone.
Many free photo editors only offer a very limited selection of tools unless you pay for a subscription, or place a watermark on exported images, but none of the tools here carry any such restrictions. Whichever one you choose, you can be sure that there are no hidden tricks to catch you out.
1. GIMP
The best free photo editor for advanced image editing
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It's packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you'd find in premium software, and more are being added every day.
The photo editing toolkit is breathtaking, and features layers, masks, curves, and levels. You can eliminate flaws easily with the excellent clone stamp and healing tools, create custom brushes, apply perspective changes, and apply changes to isolated areas with smart selection tools.
GIMP is an open source free photo editor, and its community of users and developers have created a huge collection of plugins to extend its utility even further. Many of these come pre-installed, and you can download more from the official glossary. If that's not enough, you can even install Photoshop plugins.
2. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019
Fuss-free photo editing with automatic optimization tools
If you've got a lot of photos that you need to edit in a hurry, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019 could be the tool for you. Its interface is clean and uncluttered, and utterly devoid of ads (although you'll need to submit an email address before you can start using it).
Importing pictures is a breeze, and once they've been added to the pool, you can select several at once to rotate or mirror, saving you valuable time. You can also choose individual photos to enhance with the software's one-click optimization tool. In our tests this worked particularly well on landscapes, but wasn't always great for other subjects.
If you want to make manual color and exposure corrections, there are half a dozen sliders to let you do exactly that. It's a shame you can't also apply the same color changes to a whole set of pictures at once, but this is otherwise a brilliant free photo editor for making quick corrections.
For more advanced editing, check out Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 – the premium version of the software with enhanced optimization tools.
3. Canva
Professional-level photo editing and templates in your browser
Canva is a photo editor that runs in your web browser, and is ideal for turning your favorite snaps into cards, posters, invitations and social media posts. If you're interested in maintaining a polished online presence, it's the perfect tool for you.
Canva has two tiers, free and paid, but the free level is perfect for home users. Just sign up with your email address and you'll get 1GB free cloud storage for your snaps and designs, 8,000 templates to use and edit, and two folders to keep your work organized.
You won't find advanced tools like clone brushes and smart selectors here, but there's a set of handy sliders for applying tints, vignette effects, sharpening, adjusting brightness, saturation and contrast, and much more. The text editing tools are intuitive, and there's a great selection of backgrounds and other graphics to complete your designs.
4. Fotor
One-click enhancements to make your photos shine in seconds
Fotor is a free photo editor that's ideal for giving your pictures a boost quickly. If there's specific area of retouching you need doing with, say, the clone brush or healing tool, you're out of luck. However, if your needs are simple, its stack of high-end filters really shine.
There's a foolproof tilt-shift tool, for example, and a raft of vintage and vibrant colour tweaks, all easily accessed through Fotor's clever menu system. You can manually alter your own curves and levels, too, but without the complexity of high-end tools.
Fotor's standout function, and one that's sorely lacking in many free photo editors, is its batch processing tool – feed it a pile of pics and it'll filter the lot of them in one go, perfect if you have a memory card full of holiday snaps and need to cover up the results of a dodgy camera or shaky hand.
5. Photo Pos Pro
Advanced photo editing tools packaged in a simple interface
Photo Pos Pro isn't as well known as Paint.net and GIMP, but it's another top-quality free photo editor that's packed with advanced image-enhancing tools.
This free photo editor's interface is smarter and more accessible than GIMP's array of menus and toolbars, with everything arranged in a logical and consistent way. If it's still too intimidating, there's also an optional 'novice' layout that resembles Fotor's filter-based approach. The choice is yours.
The 'expert' layout offers both layers and layer masks for sophisticated editing, as well as tools for adjusting curves and levels manually. You can still access the one-click filters via the main menu, but the focus is much more on fine editing.
6. Paint.NET
Looking a little dated, but still a dependable all-rounder
More is not, believe it or not, always better. Paint.NET's simplicity is one of its main selling points; it's a quick, easy to operate free photo editor that's ideal for trivial tasks that don't necessarily justify the sheer power of tools like GIMP.
Don't let the name fool you, though. This isn't just a cheap copy of Microsoft's ultra-basic Paint – even if it was originally meant to replace it. It's a proper photo editor, just one that lands on the basic side of the curve.
Paint.NET’s interface will remind you of its namesake, but over the years, they’ve added advanced editing tools like layers, an undo history, a ton of filters, myriad community-created plugins, and a brilliant 3D rotate/zoom function that's handy for recomposing images.
7. PhotoScape
Raw image conversion, batch processing and much more
PhotoScape might look like a rather simple free photo editor, but take a look at its main menu and you'll find a wealth of features: raw conversion, photo splitting and merging, animated GIF creation, and even a rather odd (but useful) function with which you can print lined, graph or sheet music paper. Youtube poop editor for machine.
The meat, of course, is in the photo editing. PhotoScape's interface is among the most esoteric of all the apps we've looked at here, with tools grouped into pages in odd configurations. It certainly doesn't attempt to ape Photoshop, and includes fewer features.
We'd definitely point this towards the beginner, but that doesn't mean you can't get some solid results. PhotoScape's filters are pretty advanced, so it's if good choice if you need to quickly level, sharpen or add mild filtering to pictures in a snap.
8. Pixlr X
A comprehensive browser-based photo editor for quick results
Pixlr X is the successor to Pixlr Editor, which was one of our favorite free online photo editors for many years.
Pixlr X makes several improvements on its predecessor. For starters, it's based on HTML5 rather than Flash, which means it can run in any modern browser. It's also slick and well designed, with an interface that's reminiscent of Photoshop Express, and a choice of dark or light color schemes.
With Pixlr X, you can make fine changes to colors and saturation, sharpen and blur images, apply vignette effects and frames, and combine multiple images. There's also support for layers, which you won't find in many free online photo editors, and an array of tools for painting and drawing. A great choice for even advanced tasks.
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9. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor
A convenient way to correct lighting and exposure problems
As its name suggests, Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a trimmed-down, browser-based version of the company's world-leading photo editing software. Perhaps surprisingly, it features a more extensive toolkit than the downloadable Photoshop Express app, but it only supports images in JPG format that are below 16MB.
Again, this is a Flash-based tool, but Adobe provides handy mobile apps for all platforms so you won’t miss out if you’re using a smartphone or tablet.
This free online photo editor has all the panache you’d expect from Adobe, and although it doesn’t boast quite as many tools as some of its rivals, everything that’s there is polished to perfection. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a pleasure to use. Its only drawbacks are the limits on uploaded file size and types, and lack of support for layers.
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10. PiZap
A fun photo editor for preparing your pictures for social media
Free online photo editor PiZap is available in both HTML5 and Flash editions, making it suitable for any device. You can choose to work with a photo from your hard drive, Facebook, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Search, or a catalog of stock images. This is an impressive choice, though some of the stock images are only available to premium subscribers, and you'll need to watch out for copyright issues if you use a pic straight from Google Images.
piZap’s editing interface has a dark, modern design that makes heavy use of sliders for quick adjustments – a system that works much better than tricky icons and drop-down menus if you’re using a touchscreen device.
When you’re done, you can share your creation on all the biggest social media networks, as well as piZap’s own servers, Dropbox and Google Drive. Alternatively, you can save it to your hard drive, send it via email, or grab an embed code. You can only export your work in high quality if you’ve opened your wallet for the premium editor, but for silly social sharing that’s unlikely to be a problem.
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For many years, GIMP (which stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program”) has been the favorite image-editing software for proponents of free, open-source programs. These users appreciated the program’s ability to manipulate GIMP's scripts and code — and the fact that it is free — so much that they were willing to put up with what was once a slow, limited, often buggy and confusing program. But GIMP has matured, and now has a cleaner, more standard interface; improved performance; and a richer set of competitive features and tools. As such, it is now a contender among photo editing programs.
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However, GIMP will still appeal more to folks who enjoy the process of image editing and scripting than to consumers who want a program that’s easy to use or to serious photographers who need professional-level tools such as RAW processing and CMYK editing.
A More Standard Interface
On the surface, GIMP's interface conforms to the standard graphics-program layout. The toolbox is on the left, and the dockable palettes (layers, channels, brushes, colors, undo history, etc.) are on the right. In the center workspace, the new single-window mode docks all opened images as tabs. The tabs display very useful thumbnails of the pictures, rather than just the names as other photo editors do. One minor difference from the standard design is that the options for the selected tool are displayed in a palette below the toolbox rather than in the usual ribbon at the top of the screen.
Upon closer inspection, however, you’ll find that the underlying organization of the program isn't what you might expect. Key features are located in drop-down menus that aren't immediately logical. For instance, Brightness/Contrast is found under the Color menu, and the options for these menu-based commands are pop-up windows that can't be docked or otherwise kept open after you've applied the edit.
Editing Tools That Go Beyond the Basics
Although it’s missing the depth of Photoshop or Affinity Photo, GIMP has just about all of the essential photo editing tools, features and commands that most users want. These include special-effect filters; exposure controls, such as levels and curves; and color controls, such as hue/saturation;replace color, bucket fill, paintbrush, eraser, selection tools, and so on. For the most part, they work well and produce a nice-quality image.
In addition, GIMP goes far beyond the basics to give you the controls for some rather advanced editing, such as channel manipulations. Although GIMP has layer masks, it doesn't have adjustment layers. On the other hand, it has a very nice 'open as layers' command, which places a photo into a layer of another image. What's more, layers can now be organized into groups. Of course, being GIMP, the layer groups are scriptable via a plugin API.
With the recent major revision, GIMP has made nice improvements to bring the program more in line with competitors. For instance, the revised Text tool works directly on your picture rather than in a separate window, with control over font, size, color, alignment, baseline offset and kerning.
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An Extensible System
What sets GIMP apart is that it’s open-source and easily extensible — or at least it's easy for those who know how to code. In fact, a large population of user/developers continues to explore and invent new extensions to GIMP.
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Unlike most photo editing programs, GIMP doesn't support the many third-party Photoshop-compatible plugins. However, GIMP comes with a few dozen plugins, such as those in the Filters menu. In addition, GIMP's active community of user/developers has created a wide range of plugins. Although it can be a security risk to install a plugin from what may be an unknown source, any feature or command you think GIMP might be missing could very likely be available as a plugin. If it isn't, you can tap into the open-source community to learn how to create it yourself.
GIMP supports a variety of scripting languages, including Python and Scheme. Script-Fu (which is based on Scheme) is installed with GIMP and is what most people use to create macros of tasks they do frequently, such as resizing an image for the web.
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Steep Learning Curve
Many of GIMP's photo editing tasks and workflows don't work the way they do on other programs, so it takes some time to understand how to do even simple tasks. For instance, converting a selection to a layer mask involves first saving it as a channel and then applying that channel to a layer as a mask. Download shotcut video editor for mac. In addition to being nonintuitive for most people who are used to other image editors' simple 'save selection' command, it's just too many steps.
GIMP offers practically no guidance. The Help menu depends on a user manual that has to be installed separately (and installation requires too many confusing steps). Though you can access the manual online, that version is difficult to navigate. What's more, while it covers just about everything, the manual has little depth. A novice user will probably end up with more questions than answers after reading it.
Given that GIMP isn't supported by a corporate structure, it depends on the community of user/developers to provide help for new users. On the bright side, a good number of video tutorials for GIMP are available on YouTube.
Compatibility
Gimp 2 Photo Editor
GIMP has no sharing options. However, it supports a wide range of file formats. It opens and saves all of the usual ones — JPEG, GIF, PSD, PNG and TIFF — plus a couple dozen others, such as AutoDesk FLC, PostScript, Targa, PaintShop Pro PSP and more.
As with most photo editing programs, if you wish to save all editing information, such as layers and transparencies, you’ll need to save your image in GIMP's proprietary file format: XCF.
GIMP can run on just about any operating system commonly (and maybe not so commonly) in use today — not just macOS/Mac OS X, Windows and GNU/Linux, but also FreeBSD, OS/2, Digital UNIX and others.
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Bottom Line
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GIMP is often described as a possible Photoshop killer, but it really is not, nor is it likely ever to become one, given its complexity. Still, for geek photographers who enjoy working with an open-source program that may need some tweaking to fit their work style, GIMP provides a nice alternative that also happens to be just the right price: free. But serious photographers who need professional tools, such as RAW processing or CMYK support, or consumers who are more interested in results than process, won’t get much satisfaction from GIMP.
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