10 Best Photoshop Alternatives for Fast and Easy Photo Editing

10 Best Photoshop Alternatives for Fast and Easy Photo Editing

1) PhotoCut: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Non-Designers

If you’re not a designer by trade, Photoshop can seem pretty overwhelming. PhotoCut is the complete opposite.

This powerful mobile image editor uses AI technology to assist with various key tasks. The standout feature here is the cut-out tool, which lets you remove the background from any image and replace it with something better — useful for online retailers and keen selfie photographers.

Those users will also appreciate the one-click export presets for every big ecommerce platform, along with the eye-catching social media templates.

PhotoCut also allows you to clear away unwanted distractions, optimize the lighting and colors of your photos, add text, and slap on some stickers.

Most importantly, you can achieve all of this on your phone within a few minutes.

Platforms: iOS, Android, web

Pricing: Pro membership is $9.99/month, or $59.99/year

2) Snapseed: The Best Free Photoshop Alternative on Mobile

If saving money is your primary concern, Snapseed is probably your best option.

Maintained by Google, this free image editor has been around for many years, but it still feels pretty modern. The app contains a range of useful features, from local adjustments to one-tap filters.

Platforms: iOS and Android

Pricing: Free

3) Affinity Photo 2: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Creative Pros

This very polished image editor offers most of the same features you will find in Adobe’s flagship, including support for RAW files, packaged in a stylish interface.

Many creative professionals who dislike Adobe’s Creative Cloud pricing have turned to Affinity over the past few years, as the software is sold via a one-time purchase.

Platforms: Windows, macOS, iPad

Pricing: One-time purchase of $54.99 on desktop and $11.99 on iPad

4) GIMP: The Best Open-Source Photoshop Alternative

This free desktop software has been around for many years, thanks to a team of dedicated developers. It provides a good range of graphic design and photo editing tools, albeit presented in a clunky interface.

Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows

Pricing: Free

5) Photopea: The Best Photoshop Alternative on the Web

If your primary device is an underpowered Windows laptop or a Chromebook, Photoshop isn’t an option. Probably the next best thing is Photopea.

This browser-based photo editor is a pretty faithful rendition of Photoshop Elements, except a few years ago. It provides most of the features you would expect from a desktop image editor, including layers, selections, and brushes.

It’s probably not quite as powerful as GIMP overall, but Photopea is free to use, and accessible on a vast range of devices.

Platforms: Web

Pricing: Free

6) Pixelmator Pro: The Best Photoshop Alternative Optimized for Mac

Available only on macOS, Pixelmator Pro is an app that offers similar features to Photoshop.

��Aimed at creative professionals and skillful amateurs, this software is easy on the eye and surprisingly fast on Apple computers. It’s pretty affordable, as well.

There is a slight emphasis towards photo editing, with support for RAW files, but Pixelmator Pro also offers vector drawing tools, and some features that would suit UI designers.

Platforms: macOS

Pricing: $39.99

7) Canva: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Marketing

If your design needs mainly revolve around creating marketing content, Canva is certainly worth a look.

This cross-platform app caters for the most basic image editing requirements, such as adding overlays to a photo. For such tasks, Canva is pretty intuitive, allowing marketing professionals to whip up social media posts and online flyers in a few minutes.

The downside is that you don’t have many tools to work with. If you need to tackle retouching or even basic photo editing, you will need to look elsewhere.

Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, web

Pricing: Free with limited tools, premium plans from $119/user/year

8) PicMonkey: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Print Designs

While Photoshop is often used for altering digital images, it is also used for creating print designs. In this niche, PicMonkey is a viable alternative.

Launched back in 2012, this app was one of the very first online photo editors. Today, it’s available both on the web and on mobile, providing a range of basic photo editing tools. 

��The best features of PicMonkey relate to layouts. For instance, you can easily create simple collages, event invitations, and flyers, with relatively little effort.

��Platforms: Web, iOS, Android

Pricing: From $7.99/month

9) Luminar Neo: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Beginners

Powered by machine learning, Luminar Neo is aimed at photographers who would like to enhance their photos, but lack the time or knowledge to wade into the manual sliders.

For example, rather than moving controls marked brightness and contrast, you use tools called Golden Hour, Supercontrast, and Color Harmony. You can add many similar smart features via plugins.

Overall, the software does a good job — but the results are obviously a little generic, and you miss out on some important manual adjustments. 

��Platforms: Windows, macOS

Pricing: From $9.95/device/month, or $199 for lifetime access

10) Adobe Lightroom: The Best Photoshop Alternative for Photographers

If you don’t mind using Adobe products, you can find a pretty good Photoshop alternative inside the Creative Cloud.

��Adobe Lightroom lacks some of the more advanced features found in Photoshop, but it still provides a good range of image editing tools. 

Used by most professional photographers, this app is primarily for storing and organizing photos within a library — but you can still adjust lighting and colors, correct distortion, and even apply virtual filters.

Subscribers can sync edits between devices, although the version of Lightroom made for mobile devices is a bit stripped back.

��Platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, web

Pricing: Premium is $9.99/month, or from $1.99/month for mobile-only access

No single app dominates all of these categories. But if you were to make a giant comparison chart, we reckon that PhotoCut would come out as the best Photoshop alternative for most users.

PhotoCut come out as the best Photoshop alternative for most users.

Why? Well for a start, it’s available on pretty much all mobile devices and you can access the online version via most desktop browsers. 

The app also covers all the most common edits you are likely to need, and allows you to apply them at speed. There is zero learning curve, and PhotoCut works with most common file types.