Free Photoshop?

Now that my students are becoming hooked on Photoshop, most will ask me for a copy. As much as I would love for my students to have a copy, it is not something I can freely distribute. However, there are some free Photoshop-like software programs out there that are pretty good. Here are a few.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, and an online batch processing system.

Paint.NET is an open source software you can download with many plugins that can improve it’s functionality. You can even edit a .psd file with this software, re-touch your photos and do much more. It’s a pretty good alternative to Adobe Photoshop for a casual graphic artist / logo designer.

Pixlr is web-based. Pixlr’s various tools have a distinctly artistic bent. For instance, the pencil tool simulates using the tip or edge of a pencil, depending on how you move the cursor. The software also comes with excellent filters.

Sumo Paint is web-based, feature-rich, free paint tool and photo manipulation application. But Sumo Paint is not just a tool; it boasts an impressive online art community of over a 4 million unique users from 200 countries.

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.

If you still want the “real deal”, you can pay a subscription fee (at a discounted student rate) to Adobe’s Creative Cloud Service which give you access to all the Adobe programs.