Is there really no viable alternative for Photoshop on Linux?

I’m starting this off by saying that I’m looking for any type of reasonably advanced photo manipulation tool, that runs natively under Linux. It doesn’t have to be FOSS.

I switched to Linux, from Windows, about three years ago. I don’t regret the decision whatsoever. However, one thing that has not gotten me away from Windows entirely, is the severe lack of photo editing tools.

So what’s available? Well, you have GIMP. And then there’s Krita, but that’s more of a drawing software. And then…

Well that’s it. As far as I know.

  1. GIMP

Now, as someone migrating from Photoshop, GIMP was incredibly frustrating, and I didn’t understand anything even after a few weeks of trying to get into it. Development seemed really slow, too. It’s far from intuitive, and things that really should take a few steps, seemingly takes twenty (like wrapping text on a path? Should that really be that difficult?).

I would assume if you’re starting off with GIMP, having never touched Photoshop, then it’d be no issue. But as a user migrating, I really can’t find myself spending months upon months to learn this program. It’s not viable for me.

No hate against GIMP, I’m sure it works wonders for those who have managed to learn it. But I can’t see myself using it, and I don’t find myself comfortable within it, as someone migrating from Photoshop.

  1. Krita

Krita, on the other hand, I like much more. But, it’s more of a drawing program. Its development is more focused on drawing, and It’s missing some features that I want - namely selection tools. Filters are good, but I find G’MIC really slow. It also really chugs when working with large files.

Both of these programs are FOSS. I like that. I like FOSS software. But, apart from that, are there really no good alternatives to Photoshop? Again, doesn’t need to be FOSS. I understand more complex programs take more development power, and I have no problem using something even paid and proprietary, as long as it runs on Linux natively.

I’ve tried running Photoshop under WINE, and it works - barely. For quick edits, it might work fine. But not for the work I do.

So I raise the question again. Are there no good alternatives to Photoshop? And then I raise a follow-up question, that you may or may not want to answer: If not, why?

Thanks in advance!

hollyberries,

Can it be a web one? If so, I’ve used Photopea in the past.

Antiques,

Photopea is amazing and I think it’s made by a single developer who is crazy good.

TheWonderfool,

+1 for Photopea. I found it extremely friendly coming from Photoshop, has a lot of functionalities and works great on computers where I can’t/won’t install Photoshop. YMMV though, since you want to use it as a full replacement and I used it only for simple retouching/modifications when I’m not on the desktop

incognito_15,

Surprised I had to scroll this far to see Photopea. It’s a fantastic alternative to Photoshop, and it’s accessible on nearly any platform since it’s web-based.

carlytm,

Another +1 for Photopea from me. I had been on-and-off wrestling with Wine to get Photoshop to run since I had switched to Linux, but since discovering Photopea I haven’t felt the need to bother with that. In addition to the website version, if you aren’t religiously anti-Electron, there’s a desktop app for it on Flathub.

Bleach7297,
@Bleach7297@lemmy.ca avatar

I hear you. I hate Photoshop, glory to Photoshop and all that. You can download a Windows 10 iso for free. Fire it up in Boxes or whatever VM software you have and enjoy unadulterated Photoshop. Sure, you’re running a whole bloated OS and emulating hardware for just one app, but disk space is cheap, and you can disconnect the virtual nic if you don’t want it online.

whodoctor11,

I know there’s a config file for GIMP that make it more like Photoshop, called PhotoGIMP. It’s on GitHub.

Bipta,

Wow that actually looks usable. I've always written GIMP off as unusable for me as a Photoshop user.

IanM32,

It’s not a perfect clone, but it definitely eases the transition. I gave it a try and found it quite usable.

geoff,

A long time ago, when I was broke and decided I couldn’t afford Photoshop, I decided to invest the time in learning GIMP.

Even though I’m a UX professional, and the barely okay UX does bother me, that has turned out to be a wise investment because no matter what, GIMP is always there for me. Always!

The price never goes up. It never gets paywalled by a subscription. It never has shady license changes. It changes slowly and deliberately. I never have to convince a new boss to pay for it. I never have to wonder if it will be available for a project.

That was like 20 years ago. I don’t how much value I’ve gotten out of that initial investment, but I bet it’s a LOT.

coffeetest,

I work with a small nonprofit that years ago was donated Photoshop. Over the years as upgrades happened, the org received new donations in one way or another to keep it current enough that it was still helpful. Even with a legit corporate donation of the software the license for it was a pain to deal with. At one point when it needed to be reinstalled it was no longer possible and I told the org to just forget about it. Last time I talked with Adobe to try to get it working, which they refused to do, I ended up telling them I would never use an Adobe product willingly again. I personally learned Gimp at that point and while I only use it from time to time it does the job and as you say, it is always there, always works, has plenty of online help and does anything that I need it to do.

Just like beingoff corporate social media, I try to use FOSS as much as is reasonable because while it may have rougher edges at times, it can actually be more reliable. I manage some servers as part of my job and over the years the licensed stuff, Windows server, Exchange, VMWare at some point will bite you back with a dead end or major costs where as Debian...

BiggestBulb,
BiggestBulb avatar

I learned Gimp alongside Photoshop ~10 years ago and it's my preferred image editor. It does have some silliness sometimes, but overall I adore it.

One of the best things they ever did was making it one-window by default.

atomkarinca,

the frustration is awfully familiar, i must say.

the thing about gimp and krita is: gimp is an image manipulation software and krita is a drawing software, and as far as i can see from my so’s work, photoshop is a somewhat mixture of those two. from the jump, we’re not comparing apples to apples, unfortunately.

but you already answered your own question, i think.

see, foss programs aren’t there to be a drop-in replacment for their closed sourced alternatives. they emerge from a need from the community. what is more, usually you will have multiple programs encompassing a single workflow of their closed sourced counterparts; meaning they are modular.

so even if there was some other program apart from these, it would have a learning curve, unless adobe open sources photoshop. so there is a viable alternative (which i know from experience) but there is a learning curve, albeit a steep one for someone coming from photoshop.

you shouldn’t limit yourself, but it would immensely improve your understanding of the software if you try to recreate simple pieces of your workflow using gimp, once in a while.

Reva,

Darktable if you want to do professional photography editing, and GIMP if you want to modify graphics, pixelart, design flyers or handouts, posters, or whatever else you want to do in a raster editor.

I have been using GIMP since fifth grade in school when we had an intro to photo manipulation, and since whenever I needed something edited, composited or designed. It blows my mind again and again that people online apparently find GIMP hard to use or unintuitive. It’s one of the most normal programs I have ever used. Photoshop on the other hand feels utterly inconceivable to me.

dino,

If not, why?

I mean, how much money is Adobe investing in Photoshop? Also I am really curious about GIMP really as bad as you and others here describe it as… I have the feeling people expect a carbon copy of Photoshop where they can use their brain imprinted workflows to achieve the exact same results. This of course is just asking for failure. You rather have to get used to GIMPs (any other FOSS program) workflows and see if you can achieve similar results and decide if the increased time spent worth it, to use a software which is free and open source or not.

shotgun_crab,

It mostly depends on what features of Photoshop you use. If you use most of them, there’s no real alternative imo. If you only use a subset of its features, then GIMP, Krita, Photopea or Pinta may become viable alternatives for your use case.

hare_ware,

Or Inkscape or Blender. Deforming text on along a curve isn’t really something I’d use anything try to be Photoshop for TBH.

michaelmrose,

Adobe’s annual revenue is over 18 billion dollars Gimp has one developer who is almost full time and various part time contributions. One answer is that Linux support would be both non-trivial and would only add 1-3% to revenue for a multi platform editor. There WAS a reputably professional editor bloom.app at one point but it seems to have died.

allforthebest,

Bruhh GIMP is so hard to use but it’s doing basic stuff I needed like typing text.

If I needed Photoshop or something else I would use GNOME Boxes.

Ascend910,

Maybe try photopea?

negativeyoda,

Came to post this. I use photopea to do photo edits at work

garam,

When internet connection is great… photopea is… a viable alternative… sadly in 3rd world country, internet sucks… :'(

vsh,
@vsh@lemm.ee avatar

It has very messy UI and it’s not intuitive for me

merthyr1831,

GIMP is beyond stale and it’s frustrating to see people recommend it as an “alternative” to Photoshop when it’s about as actively developed as X11. The fact it’s making rounds on FOSS news channels/sites because they ported the UI to GTK 3 (Which was replaced by GTK4 3 years ago now) is really a sign of how bad the project has gotten.

Photopea is a near feature-for-feature clone of Photoshop, designed around the superior UX and UI of photoshop, and all within a webapp that leverages hardware acceleration. All done by a single person. The downside is that it’s a proprietary webapp that costs money to use without ads clogging half the screen.

And you know what? I STILL prefer Photopea to GIMP, after using the latter for years. GIMP is old, slow, and pretty much dead in the water and I’m certain that they’d have produced 3.0 faster if someone had rewritten it over a weekend instead of trying to port the godawful mess of tech debt that must be going on inside the GIMP project atm.-

Photoshop getting better support via WINE/Proton is more likely than GIMP ever returning to its hay-day of being a true competitor to PS.

abuttifulpigeon,

Downside of Photopea is it’s not open-source (mainly because the creator needs ad revenue to run it, but I digress)

southernwolf,
@southernwolf@pawb.social avatar

I have to agree, Photopea really is the best alternative to PS for Linux users. It’s honestly good! I wish Affinity would consider launching a Linux Verizon, as I actually like that a lot more than PS, but that seems equally as unlikely…

So for now, Photopea seems the best option overall. One plus, being written in WASM (probably using Rust?) it’s really speedy and fast. It feels faster than Gimp anyways, which is definitely not a good statement on the state that Gimp is in…

michaelmrose,

Prompt move to GTK3 and now 4 adds very little value to gimp. Using it as benchmark is completely useless. If I understand correctly there are major changes happening under the hood and the effort may not have much effect until the work is finished.

erwan,

It looks like you already find what they alternatives are, but as you noticed they’re not Photoshop. They work differently so you’ll need to develop a different set of skills to used them.

If what you want is to use Photoshop, the best is to install Photoshop itself with Wine.

FoxAndKitten,

IDK if you can convince it to run on Linux, but I’ve been pretty happy with paint.net lately

It’s basically a newer project like gimp. It’s got the core abilities and appearance of Photoshop. Feature wise, it’s less than gimp or Photoshop, but what it has works decently well

Most importantly for me, the UX is much better than gimp… Not as good as Photoshop, but I find stuff is usually where I’d expect it to be

Obviously it’s built on .net, so theoretically it could run native on Linux… Not sure if anyone has done the work to make that actually happen

s20,

I used to love paint.net back in my Wod ows days. It’s a great middle ground between Paint and Photoshop, and if you only ever do light graphical work, it’s all you need.

If you want something like Paint.net but native to Linux, you should check out Pinta; I’ve used it for years. It’s not going to replace Photoshop, but then it’s not meant to be:

www.pinta-project.com

You can also find it on Flathub and the Snap store.

Diabolo96,

Have you tried playing with AI like stable diffusion ?

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