5 Best Open Source Photoshop Alternatives 2024

Adobe Photoshop is an extremely popular graphic design and image editing program. However, it is a paid and closed-source software. Here is a list of the best open-source Photoshop alternatives to use for free.

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You can download these programs, together with their source code, for free. Also, you are allowed to edit the source codes without any restrictions.

These Photoshop alternatives offer all the necessary tools for creating and editing graphic designs. In most of these alternative programs, you can import and edit Photoshop (PSD) images.

Best Free Photoshop Alternatives [Open Source]

These open-source Photoshop alternatives support PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, RAW, CRW, PCX, etc. support standard image formats. These best Photoshop alternatives also provide additional tools for performing tasks such as measuring distance and creating animations.

1. GIMP

GIMP is a free open-source Photoshop alternative for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is a full-fledged photo editing program just like Photoshop. You can open and edit almost any image format like JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TGA, DNG, RAW, CRW, and more.

It also supports Photoshop (PSD) images. It comes with a good set of image editing tools that allow you to edit and enhance images.

In its interface, you can find a large editing area to edit sections like Paint, Layers, Filters, Colors, and more. After editing, you can export the final image in PSD and other standard image formats.

It is one of the best free open-source Photoshop alternative programs with which you can directly edit Photoshop projects and images in other common formats.

2. Krita

Krita is another free open-source Photoshop alternative for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is primarily a painting software with which you can draw characters, cartoons, and designs. However, it also offers a lot of photo editing tools that make it a good Photoshop alternative.

You can upload and edit Photoshop (PSD) images into the program. Apart from PSD, you can also use it to edit images of GIF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, TGA, WebP, XPM, and other formats.

Similar to input image formats, it also supports many output image formats including PSD format. Krita is another good open-source Photoshop alternative with which you can create and edit graphic designs.

3. Gimphoto

Gimphoto is another free open-source Photoshop alternative for Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can edit images and create graphic designs.

It also allows users to work on multiple projects at the same time, along with a multi-tabbed interface.

You can access the painting tools from the left side of the interface and the graphic design and image editing tools from the top toolbar. Along with various tools, Photoshop (PSD), PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNM, RAW, etc. offers support for image formats.

After creating a new graphic or editing an existing graphic, you can save it as one of the supported image formats.

It is another feature-rich open-source Photoshop alternative that provides all the important image editing and graphic design tools and features.

4. Chasys Draw IES

Chasys Draw IES is another free open-source Photoshop alternative for Windows. Similar to Adobe Photoshop, you can also use it to edit images in various formats and create beautiful graphic designs.

It also focuses on the drawing part of graphic design and offers a dedicated paint tools section for creating custom drawings and designs.

Other import editing and graphic design sections (Layer, Effects, Transforms, Image, etc.) are also available. This program supports images in various formats such as PNG, JPG, GIF, ICO, BMP, PSD, and more.

Chasys Draw IES is a suite of image editing applications that includes a layer-based image editor, animation layers, icon editing support, and super-resolution with a multi-layer image file converter (Chasys Draw) and image stacking (Chasys Draw IES Artist).

The entire suite is designed to take advantage of multi-core processors, touch screens, and pen-enabled devices.

It is a feature-rich open-source Photoshop alternative that offers the necessary graphic design tools along with some useful additional tools.

5. MyPaint

MyPaint is a free open-source Photoshop alternative for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A program is mainly a drawing software for creating custom pictures and drawings. In addition to creating custom designs, you can load images into it and edit them to create custom graphics. However, unlike other similar software, it only supports images in JPEG and PNG formats.

Layer, Color, Scratchpad, Brush, etc. to edit images and create graphics. Provides multiple tool sections such as. In each tool section, you can find several tools to perform different editing tasks.

It is another good open-source Photoshop alternative where you can create a custom design and do some basic image editing. Unlike Photoshop, it lacks important image editing tools.