Photoshop is a leading graphics design software known for its high-end features in image editing. Many graphics designers have often referred to it as the best graphics tool ever to exist.
You need Photoshop for artistic typography, layered image editing, drawing, background change, and more.
Used chiefly by photographers and designers, the software has been a leader in the graphics design industry for decades. Adobe updates its Photoshop product frequently to support new file formats and introduce advanced features, some of which customers request.
Adobe Photoshop’s top features include unique AI-powered filters, unmatched selection tools, and automatic sky replacement in a presentable, polished interface.
However, Photoshop has some downsides that give other graphic design software for Mac, an upper hand.
Photoshop has no perpetual licenses. The premium versions are expensive for most people. If you need to edit images occasionally or do some basic photo editing, the pricing is far-fetched.
Photoshop requires immense physical resources on your Mac to function optimally. Otherwise, the software will often freeze and slow the performance of your device.
The complex interface with sophisticated tools makes Photoshop difficult for novice photographers. The web-based version only supports a few file types, unlike its desktop version.
Given all these reasons, we decided to review some of the best free Photoshop alternatives for Mac.
Take a look at what we have on our list.
Best Free Photoshop Alternatives For Mac
1. Krita
Krita is a graphic design program to create affordable tools for all artists. The free Photoshop alternative for Mac loads faster.
The software is good at crafting quality paint designs to create art concepts. So, when you want to include such art concepts in your photos or create your compositions, Krita will do the magic! Krita works well on macOS, Linux, and Windows devices.
Krita is easy to use and more beginner-friendly than Photoshop. In fact, you can use it to do several projects simultaneously, with numerous effects at your disposal.
The software is ideal for sketching and digital painting since it supports drawing tablets.
Explore the best alternatives to Krita in this post.
2. PhotoScape X
PhotoScape X is a graphic design software that makes adding graphics and text to photos easy, offering unique tools and brushes you won’t find in Photoshop.
The all-in-one software offers features like cut out, batch, combine, collage, photo viewer, editor, color picker, create GIF, RAW images, screen capture, and more.
PhotoScape X is ideal for beginners since it has filters that are easy to use and can improve any photo in a few clicks to inspire creativity. You can add various filters, effects, and adjustments to enhance your custom style.
Students can use this software to clean up their photos for their yearbooks. Your students will often figure out how to do more with profound creativity.
Also, with PhotoScape X, you can express your feelings by applying the film effect and the light leak effect that will bring life into your otherwise featureless, boring photos.
With these many features, PhotoScape X is free of charge, making it one of the best free Photoshop alternatives for Mac.
3. Apple Photos
Apple Photos is a lightweight photo editing tool that comes preinstalled on your macOS device, making it open-source. Apple Photos is the cloud-based repository that stores the photos you take with your iPad or iPhone.
With Apple Photos, you can search, edit, and share your favorite photos on macOS and iOS platforms. This app is easy to use and has a simple interface with effects that you can learn fast.
The software collates your photos by date, sorting them into folders to let you adjust their brightness, correct color, contrast, and saturation in just a click. It is a photo organizer as well as an editor.
The photo-editing attributes are the same whether you’re working from your MacBook or iPad, so you can always work without any challenges.
There is no need to panic if you want to make a few photo edits on your MacBook or iOS device.
Apple Photos is free, whereas Photoshop will cost you more and decrease your computer’s performance, with heavy freeze intervals if your device has low RAM and storage.
4. GIMP
Whenever you think about editing photos for free, GIMP should instantly cross your mind.
This graphic design software has a more straightforward interface than Photoshop, even beginners can easily access design tools.
GIMP runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows, with plenty of helpful tutorials on its website. This software allows you to work with several file formats without compatibility issues.
You can download your preferred plugins from the Internet and import them into GIMP. And since the program does not require many system resources, it can run even on old-generation computers.
You can benefit from GIMP’s advanced features, like filters and layer masks. Most graphic designers and photographers will find this program the best fit to do most of their work.
Find out how GIMP compares with Photoshop in this comparison post.
5. darktable
darktable is a free photo editing tool that offers essential image enhancement tools ideal for beginners with Mac computers. You can build and save presets to edit your photos with a click.
The software’s simple interface allows designers to apply filters, correct colors, and adjust contrast and brightness in a few clicks. It is a simulation of a lightable room, allowing you to manage digital negatives of your photos in a database. You can build from newly crafted raw images.
As an entirely color-managed program, darktable supports Adobe RGB, linear RGB, sRGB, and XYZ color spaces. The app can detect the color display profile courtesy of its ICC profile support.
While sorting and filtering, you can find your images by ratings, color labels, tags, and more by using a database query pegged on your photos’ metadata.
darktable allows you to import raw, standard, high dynamic range, and raw image formats like CR2, JPEG, NEF, HDR, RAF, PFM, and more.
You can find darktable in your language and work with tools that give you feedback in a language you best understand, giving it an advantage over Photoshop.
6. PIXLR
PIXLR is a free web-based graphic design software with AI power. PIXLR lets you create stunning designs and edit photos from any device (phone, desktop, or browser) for free, provided you have access to the Internet. It is an entirely web-based editor.
You can start from a video, a photo, or an empty canvas, pick from their professionally crafted templates, and make adjustments like color correction, vignettes, saturation, frames, and contrast. The mobile version makes it even easier to edit images as you move.
PIXLR is ideal for you if you have limited storage space on your computer. The interface is simple, with straightforward tools that are easier to learn than Photoshop.
It is one of the few web graphic editors that support working with layers. And once you finish, you can save your work in cloud storage.
You can use this tool completely free, but if you want to get access to thousands of tools, more elements, fonts, and other powerful tools, subscribe to their premium version that costs $1.99/month, $7.99/month, and $12.99/month for the Plus, Premium, and Team plans respectively.
7. Inkscape
Inkscape is a free photo editing app ideal for graphic designers focused on vector images. With this software, you can adjust photos with actions like cutting, cropping, and pasting.
You can easily convert your photos into vector images in just a few clicks. Inkscape has often been used by graphic designers when they need to access painting and drawing tools for free.
You can use Inkscape on macOS and Windows computers.
8. Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo by Skylum is known for its startling interface built for graphic designers of all proficiency levels. Its advanced features are automated, thanks to intuitive artificial intelligence (AI) powered controls.
Luminar Neo has all you need to invent colors that pop. You can also fine-tune the color balance manually to achieve your goal.
Luminar Neo’s AI neural nets identify facial widgets and let you edit them directly. This feature makes portrait retouching easy, unlike if done with conventional tools.
The app can calculate the depth of an image and develop its 3D map to make it easy to spread light naturally on a two-dimension image in three-dimension space.
You can seamlessly transfer photos to your computer from your phone using the Luminar Share app for iOS.
Luminar Neo can remove mask objects and dust spots and automatically relight the scene in your photo. You can add unlimited layers to bring your idea to life, add exposure effects, make colleges, and test your creativity.
Luminar offers licenses in seats. One license can serve one to two devices (seats), so you can activate the app on two seats at once, regardless of their operating system, whether macOS or Windows.
Users manage their activations in their Skylum account. You can add or remove more seats in the account using your Luminar Neo license.
With Luminar Neo, despite being cheaper, you can transfer your license when changing or upgrading to a different computer at no cost. You only need to access your Skylum account to share and activate the new device.
You can work with Luminar Neo for free for seven days or subscribe to one of the premium packages in their marketplace. They offer one-month, one-year, or lifetime subscriptions.
9. Sumopaint
Sumopaint by Sumo is a graphics design program that runs on flash-based browsers and a Chrome web app for Chromebooks. Since this software is web-based, you don’t need to download and install it on your device.
Sumopaint has similar functionality and design to Photoshop. If you want to get layering (up to 100 layers), assorted brushes (over 300 brushes), editing tools, and wand types, Sumopaint offers these at zero cost. It is a leading option for mid-range editing.
Apart from the SUMO format, you can import and export files with JPEG, GIF, and PNG extensions, allowing you the flexibility you require during design.
With Sumopaint, you can clone stamps when drawing in real time and use its impressive color picker.
Sumopaint’s web-based version is free. You can buy the pro version for $7 a month and the edu one for $2 a month. They offer a seven-day free trial period.
10. inPixio Photo Studio
With inPixio Photo Studio, you can edit, crop, add, and straighten special effects to photos. You can professionally adjust photo brightness, remove red eye effects and backgrounds, and restore and repair old images; all in one software.
inPixio Photo Studio lets you rid skin blemishes, improve the bokeh effect, and blur backgrounds. Also, you can erase undesirable objects like wires, signs, or people from your photo while maintaining its full quality.
The erase feature can also retouch portraits and reduce wrinkles to enhance the overall photo appearance. The software’s selection tool has an automatic detection mechanism for easy automatic color correction.
You can create collages and make several adjustments to your photos in just one click with the help of inPixio Photo Studio’s intuitive, innovative technology. You no longer need Photoshop gurus to craft unique photo experiences.
Also, with inPixio Photo Studio, users can select in-built presets for transforming photos into retro, cinematic, natural, or other modes, then share the photos across social media platforms.
Through its edge smoothing feature, the software allows you to add cutout images to make collages or photomontages with smoothly crafted contours for a better transition between the background and the subject. This technique will make your photomontage integration more successful and colorful.
inPixio Photo Studio runs on macOS and Windows operating systems. The software has a free version, and the pro version costs $79.99 annually. You can try the pro version for five days and they bill their customers annually.
These two programs offer similar features but Photoshop is more expensive. So, why would you spend more for the nearly-same product?
For support, you can contact their reliable customer experience team via email, phone, and other online forums to address your concern.
11. Photopea
Photopea is a fully web-based photo editor developed to relieve you from the stress involved in downloading and installing software on your computer. This feature gives it an edge over Photoshop since the latter’s web version doesn’t support certain file types.
The platform will help you edit photos quickly, especially when you want to do basic tasks like resizing or cropping an image. This alternative will save you the time you could spend waiting for heavy photo editing programs to load.
Photopea supports different photo formats, including PSD. You can edit layers to improve your photos instantly with basic adjustments quickly. The software also supports both vector and raster graphics.
Photopea’s free version contains some ads you can get rid of by paying $5 a month to benefit from the 5GB storage drive space. They offer other premium packages as well.
12. Alboom Designbox
Creative teams can use the online graphics editor Alboom Designbox to make photo albums with a vast selection of effects and themes.
This software allows you to design from scratch or upload photos from your gallery while following your business design requirements through a simple process that will ensure you have a quality final photo album.
What makes Alboom Designbox one of the best free Photoshop alternatives for Mac is that it integrates with a variety of third-party plugins and platforms to allow you to share data across different systems.
Your employees can create albums and photo slideshows, edit images, and craft professional photo books in a centralized platform. Admins can even use an integrated image editor to convert photos into digital art.
Alboom Designbox is integrated with the best print laboratories and binders to create your album to accurate specifications, giving it an advantage over Photoshop.
Apart from Alboom Designbox’s free version, the standard version goes for $9 monthly, while the pro version costs $18 a month, payable annually.
Alboom Designbox has an online support team you can reach via phone, email, and social media handles.
13. Fotojet
Teams of designers often use Fotojet to collaborate online to create photo montages, love collages, baby collages, family collages, anniversary collages, and birthday collages. This photo editing tool has an expansive library of layouts and templates.
You can select from Fotojet’s templates, including YouTube banners, Facebook covers, posters, invitations, and cards. The software also contains several photo-editing features like title and radial shift, photo frames, rotate, flip, color splash, overlays, and vignetting.
While on Fotojet, you can acquire the necessary skills to build beautiful photo designs and collages. The platform offers tips and tutorials to help you create graphic design inspiration, thank you cards, flyer designs, poster designs, baby shower invitations, and unique wedding invitations.
Fotojet allows you to resize, rotate, and crop your photos in seconds. You can enhance and touch up your photo designs with photo effects, text, clip art images, frames, overlays, and many other products that will improve your photo’s look.
Fotojet is web-based; you can access the full version from any device with any operating system whenever you are online.
Whereas Photoshop isn’t beginner-friendly, Fotojet is ideal for beginners. If you want to explore graphic design but find it challenging to pay for expensive licensing fees charged by other graphic design software, you will find it suitable.
You will get all essential design tools packaged with some advanced features for graphics and text to help you give your photo the best experience.
Fotojet has a free version with features you can try and charges $6.99 per month or $3.33 annually for the premium version.
14. Polarr
With Polarr, you can develop unlimited photo effects by applying filters, layers, and masks on photos to use in various graphic design projects.
Polarr works on the web, MacOS, Windows, Android, and iOS devices making it easy and quick to work on your images on the go.
Its web version has complete features, supporting all file types, unlike Photoshop’s web version, which is limited to a few file types. In Photoshop, if you were working on a file type not supported by the web version, you must convert it first.
Besides, you can create and save your filters from the pro version or pick from the long list of filters inbuilt into the software.
Polarr has a simple interface, making it the perfect choice for beginners who want to do basic tasks without complex features. You can smoothen blemishes with the skin editing tool.
With Polarr’s free version, you can do all standard editing functions, including resizing, cropping, and automatic color adjustments.
Polarr allows you to customize your workspace with custom tool arrangements and different themes in a couple of workspaces. You can track and access historical changes within the system.
The software has up to twelve interactive tutorials that will familiarize you with Polarr’s potential. You will get this whether you opt for the free or paid versions.
Polarr offers lens distortion and vignette fillers; you can stack or blend masks. It also includes expendable three-band watermarking and histograms. The paid version provides more layers and filters, allowing batch processing. It also comes with Apple Photos extensions.
Pay a monthly fee of at least $3.99 for the premium version.
15. Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a simple, easy-to-use photo editing app for Mac. With this app, you can create a new project or edit existing images.
Pixelmator Pro’s control panel outlook resembles Photoshop’s, making it easy for graphics designers to switch between the two programs. Most people see it as an alternative since it is way cheaper but gives you the look and feel of Photoshop.
The software is easy to navigate, with several inbuilt filters to improve the quality of your photos. It has some dynamic tools that you can use to paint your photographs digitally.
You can use Pixelmator Pro for free with their 30-day trial, after which you will pay a perpetual fee of $30. The latest version of Pixelmator Pro is available for $49.99.
Final Thoughts
Photoshop is a powerful graphics editor, no doubt. However, the price tag set to use the software is so exaggerated.
Of all the free Photoshop alternatives discussed in this article, Luminar Neo tops the list for me, thanks to its platform interoperability and the option to transfer and migrate licenses across devices on various OS platforms without additional costs. Also, the paid version of Luminar is cheaper than Photoshop.
Having said that, you can pick any of the tools from the list above and take your photo editing skills to another level without breaking the bank.
