2y ago

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.

2. 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!

187 comments

GIMP has its share of issues, just like any other software. but it's biggest issue is that somewhere down the line general users got this idea in their head that it was supposed to be a Photoshop clone.
So they go into it with certain expectations and then get frustrated when it doesn't work that way. People like me, who actually learned GIMP before PS, obviously didn't go in with the same bias and therefore have a much better grasp on it.
Gimp is not a Photoshop clone. it's its own piece of kit with it's own design and feature decisions that some may like and others may not. That's life. The developers have no obligation to follow any other software design scheme any more than Sony is obligated to follow LGs TV UI. They're not clones, they're alternatives.
if you think Gimps only function is to copy Photoshop, you're in for a bad time. If you want to use gimp as an ALTERNATIVE and go in without the bias,, you'll likely learn your way around a LOT faster.
I'm not excusing Gimps failings. far from it. but I AM saying that half the issue is the Photoshop users thinking that gimp only exists to copy everything from their precious Adobe daddy. And that's simply not true.
- Honestly I feel like this attitude is the reason GIMP’s UX suffers. They’re so determined to be “not like photoshop” that they’re unwilling to fix some of their more boneheaded UI decisions out of fear that they’d be seen as copying photoshop.
  
  That's not exactly my impression from following the design conversations through the years. They're more approaching decisions from the angle of what they think is best, their philosophy is to plainly ignore what others do and follow their own direction. Of course taking inspiration from Photoshop might sometimes be a good thing, if it doesn't conflict with the GIMP way of doing things.
  I've noticed in recent years some newcomer devs have had discussions on how to design their contributions, mentioning Photoshop and other alternative ways and there were just conversations about the merits of the different approaches that could be taken and what would fit the GIMP best, without bias.
  Anyway, I wasn't aware that GIMP UX suffers, I've never used anything else and am happy with it. It seem logical to me, obviously with fewer features than Photoshop but how much can a couple of guys do and they've had to refactor most of the GIMP for 3.0, but that'll open up for a lot of functionality being added moving forward..
- If you want to use gimp as an ALTERNATIVE and go in without the bias, you’ll likely learn your way around a LOT faster.
  I think this is the key phrase -- do you want an alternative (where you might have to learn new ways of doing things), or do you want a clone? GIMP is not a clone, but an alternative.
  I also think this gets to something I was told loooooooooong ago, when I was a young lad asking what was the best computer to buy. Someone told me, "Find all the software you want/need to run, and get the computer that will run it all."
  In other words, if you need to use Photoshop, then maybe you don't use Linux -- maybe stick with Mac or (shudder) Windows.
  
  I always love it when Linux users recommend going back to Windows as a option. It takes real maturity to admit that everything is a viable option, and sometimes especially in a professional workplace that Windows and MacOS should both be considered if Linux is limiting your workflow.
  
  @displacedcitymouse @Adderbox76 yeah I'm fairly OS agnostic, I hate them all...just hate Windows more which I think you might agree with considering the shuddering induced by mentioning Windows 😏 I use ChromeOS, Mac, & iOS daily bc for my uses they are least problematic. Use Win 10 for gaming but looking to switch to Linux not W11 for that and have been dabbling/learning Android & Linux. Honestly it's a good time to be a nerd IMHO.
- I once heard it explained that gimps programmers goal was to make a program that can edit pictures. Their goal was not to edit pictures.
- Agree, partly.
  I've migrated to a lot of different programs since switching to Linux: Premiere to Resolve, 3DS Max to Blender, to name a few. And I never expected the switch from Photoshop, which I so dearly love, to whatever good alternative that exists - to be easy. I'm willing to put in the time to learn GIMP, if only it hadn't such glaring and prominent issues that make it really difficult to use.
  I'm not expecting a clone. I'm not expecting the UI to be the same. And, I'm willing to learn this program from the ground up. But I want a consistent experience - an app that works. For me, GIMP gets in the way a lot; making things unnecessarily difficult just for the sake of being "different".
  I don't mean to hate on GIMP. It works very well for people who like it. But we all have different preferences when it comes to software, and in the end - It's just, not a good alternative for what I prefer. I'm willing to learn something new, but from my experience, GIMP will have (and has) a lot of icks that I just need to "put up with" to be usable. Especially efficiency. GIMP does not feel efficient, like at all. Might be because I haven't learned it, but even Resolve felt efficient the first time I used it.
  I don't have the same experience with Krita whatsoever. And sure, maybe Krita is a little closer to Photoshop than GIMP is, but I much prefer Krita's overall experience much more than GIMP - even if it's missing some more advanced features.
  I will stick to Krita, most likely, as that's what I find myself most comfortable with. But it's been interesting to hear what everyone else's experiences are.
- People like me, who actually learned GIMP before PS, obviously didn’t go in with the same bias and therefore have a much better grasp on it.
  Speaking for myself, I can say that's true. To the point that even if I've got access to both, my default would be GIMP.
- Photogimp is a plugin for people coming from photoshop but still may not be the exact clone

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.
- 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...
- 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.

I had the same experience moving from GIMP to Photoshop. 😂

GIMP has the closest thing to feature parity. If you're looking for similarity of UI and workflow, you're not going to get it. Adobe throws millions of dollars that open-source projects don't have at streamlining their UI. UI specialists that will work for free are unicorns, so most open-source UIs are designed by volunteer generalist programmers. Which means that said UI gets the job done, but isn't optimized for the workflow of people who don't think like the original programmers.
Personally, I might shift the same picture through Darktable, GIMP, Inkscape, and even Scribus, depending on what I was trying to do with it. (Text on a path -> probably Inkscape, then export as PNG and import into GIMP as a layer.) Is that less convenient than performing all the operations in one program? Possibly, but since I don't like Photoshop's UI either, I'm willing to give up on "one-stop shopping".
(So who, for my money, had the best UI? Probably Paint Shop Pro, twenty or so years ago when it still belonged to JASC. Of course, it was a simpler program too, and so had less junk in its interface.)
Fact is, if you're a pro, you've invested years into learning Photoshop's interface and how to get the best results out of it. You're in the position of a baseball player who's decided to start all over again with basketball. Any attempt to transition to other software is going to be really, really frustrating for you, and likely drop your productivity into the toilet for a few months at least. Plus, you're going to need some features that average users don't care about, especially if you're preparing work for print.
I hate to say it, but you may honestly be best off running Photoshop in a VM rather than trying to move to other software, at least until you can set aside a couple of months where you have no urgent projects (if that ever happens).
- There's a script for installing Photoshop with wine on Linux: https://github.com/Gictorbit/photoshopCClinux
  it worked for me
- Personally, I might shift the same picture through Darktable, GIMP, Inkscape, and even Scribus, depending on what I was trying to do with it. (Text on a path -> probably Inkscape, then export as PNG and import into GIMP as a layer.)
  Gotta love this adaptation of the "do one thing and do it well" principle.
- I hope we see more composable desktop apps in the FOSS space so that we can at least get more UI options for a given backend. Maybe then we can get closer to what users want. The other option more low code options, so users with more domain expertise and build UXs like they want.

I think one of the most insidious things about Photoshop is that it is a powerful, complex program. Using it is a skill. Which means that even if you think you are getting the better of Adobe by pirating their software, you are still building your own skills with their program, which is so full of features that classes can be taught about using it. In the end, that's a win for Adobe and their proprietary software, because if you end up getting good enough to make money from that program, you will end up finding yourself in a position where you eventually pay them, or work for someone who does. This is to the detriment of any other photo editor, of course. You won't care about how good GIMP or anything else is, much less fund it, because you won't want to use it, because you know Photoshop.
If I had deep wallets I would love to start funding GIMP for development and rebranding. But I don't have that kind of cash to push around :P
- I've read that part of why GIMP is the way it is is because it's meant to be a testbed for the GTK UI library, so features are added to use new UI elements as much as they are to aid photo manipulation, and in some cases it's considered preferable to use a weird widget so it's got a test case rather than whichever widget leads to the best UX. I don't think I've ever looked for a more definitive source than a Lemmy/Reddit comment, but it's at least consistent with my experience of using GIMP.
  
  Gtk started as the Gimp Tool Kit but I don't think there has been any real connection for ages. We're taking about 1997 or something.

Can it be a web one? If so, I've used Photopea in the past.
- +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
- 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.
- 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.
- Photopea is amazing and I think it’s made by a single developer who is crazy good.

Other than Affinity, I don't know who else is competing against Photoshop in the professional space. Neither have native Linux builds.
There's also PhotoGIMP which patches GIMP to make it look like Photoshop. You can also try installing Photoshop or Affinity via WINE.
If not, why?
Neither Adobe nor Serif see Linux as a potential market. As for the open source ones, I'm guessing it's because their funding and development team isn't as big as an industrial giant like Adobe. I'm happy Blackmagic Design supports Linux to some degree and I get to have DaVinci Resolve on Linux natively. I wouldn't be on Linux if DaVinci Resolve did not work natively tbh.
- Davinci Resolve originally ran on SGI and Sun graphic workstations, which ran IRIX and SOLARIS respectively, both System V UNIX-based OSs. It's pretty cool that they've maintained *nix-based support all of these decades.
- I love Affinity, moreso than anything Adobe makes. I also work in the creative suite all day as a designer. If Affinity would expand to linux, I’d suggest the switch whinin our department immediately.
  At least Affinity doesn’t screw around with Pantone support. They have that figured out.
- I’ve recently read that Affinity programs now work through Bottles, though I haven’t yet tried it myself.
  
  They do, but I find them very laggy compared to Windows.

Guy that made the Pantone port after that whole fiasco also made the pinkest pink and blackest black paints money can buy. His company is currently developing an alternative to Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, aaaand.. I think Premiere?
It’s being developed under the brand “Abode”
- That’s an amusing name but they take a photoshop competitor to market using that name they’re going to lose a trademark dispute in milliseconds.
  
  They also just slightly adjusted the logo
  
  "Abode" is just an English word, so they can't trademark it anyway.
  
  Sweet! I love that the armchair lawyers also migrated from Reddit :D
- Haha! I checked the Kickstarter and I absolutely love the whole thing! Doesn't look like it'll be for Linux, though (It says "PC and Mac" on the kickstarter), but I'll definitely follow the progress of this.
  
  I’m just hoping Linux is supported, and if it is, not being built in Electron would be a huge bonus
- I read that as "adobe" and thought you were kidding lmao
- Link to the project:
  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-suite-of-world-class-design-and-photography-tools/faqs
  There's also
  https://graphite.rs/
  
  Linux support seems to be "Maybe if we have enough money and time". So I highly doubt it but I would be happy to be wrong.
- Link to the Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/culturehustle/abode-a-suite-of-world-class-design-and-photography-tools/pledge/new?clicked_reward=false

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.

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

Gimp is really powerful. What are you missing from it?
- habit and practice. op himself said he believes gimp can do wonders, but he's migrating from adobe and is accustomed to photoshop's shortcuts, ui and workflow.
  imho, people go wrong expecting same experience in different application. yes, gimp works very differently but when migrating, one should count on different ui and logic. afterall, ps also have learning curve in the start and none complains.
  it's similar to users migrating from windows to linux, expecting same windows ui and workflow, blaming linux bad.
  
  They did list one specific example of text wrapping which is apparently a two step process on Photoshop and twenty steps in GIMP. Probably an exaggeration, but the sentiment seems to be that it isn't just different, its worse.
  Dealing with differences is fine, but things that are more difficult or require more steps is a problem that should hopefully be fixed.
  
  yeah, having 30 years of Photoshop experience and then being told I have to learn a whole new tool that looks and works completely differently? it took a very long time to become a master of this one tool. now I have to completely re-learn and re-master a new one?
  no thanks.
  
  While I get your point about not expecting all software to have the same workflow, keep in mind that learning a new one isn't always in the cards. The reason people don't complain when learning Adobe is because they are probably starting with it. But if they complain when switching to GIMP it's because they have to spend the time to learn a new system instead of getting their work done. And especially in a professional environment, that just ends up causing problems.
  
  While I get your point about not expecting all software to have the same workflow, keep in mind that learning a new one isn't always in the cards. The reason people don't complain when learning Adobe is because they are probably starting with it. But if they complain when switching to GIMP it's because they have to spend the time to learn a new system instead of getting their work done. And especially in a professional environment, that just ends up causing problems.
- Gimp has some basic issues.
  One example, the paint bucket tool does not anti-alias correctly in certain circumstancess so no matter the tolerance setting, you get either white outlines around your fill, or the fill explodes outside the lines and gets everywhere.
  This is something solved by other software in the nineties but Gimp still hasn't bothered to fix.
  Is this a niche problem? Yes. But when trying to do professional work, lots of detail issues like this can add up.
- If this comment isn't the perfect distillation of the frustration people have with GIMP, I don't know what is.
  OP makes a very even-handed, consciencious treatise to gather more info about alternatives to GIMP based on the UX issues they themselves have been struggling with and which are commonly recognized throughout the community, with at least one example, while acknowledging how incredible and powerful an undertaking a piece of software GIMP definitely is, and...
  ... The same cookie cutter response on every single GIMP discussion since 1998: "IT IS VERY POWERFUL. WHAT FEATURE IS IT MISSING?"
  Similar to GIMP itself: You're not wrong you're just... Not being anywhere near as helpful as you could be.
  
  I dunno. The title was "Are there really no viable alternatives to PhotoShop on Linux?". I think it's fair to say, "There's GIMP". It's viable. People use it successfully and happily. 'Nuff said.
- Since no one else seems to actually be answering you, I'll give you one. Smart Objects AKA linked layers. I use these in just about every single PSD and it has saved me rediculous amounts of time and effort undoing or redoing edits and avoiding destruction of a raster image by rotating or scaling it multiple times.
  There has been a feature request open for this for 10 years and it is still not implemented. I first found out about the intention to add linked layers several years ago but I quickly gave up when I realised how much time it was taking.
  I couldn't tell you other features as I have not used Gimp much beyond trying it out for some light projects and to make use of some of it's better-than-Photoshop color to alpha tools. But this one feature combined with all the UI, behaviour, and shortcut decisions is enough to keep me stuck on Photoshop for Windows for a long while yet.
  
  Fair enough. I guess it depends on what you're used to. I never used Photoshop and I've been using Gimp for over a decade now. I do a lot of visual editing for my work and there isn't anything I haven't been able to do with Gimp. But yes, some stuff do take hours of work. I also work with FOSS music production software and while I know the commercial ones are easier to use, everything I've wanted to accomplish using FOSS music production I've been able to get it done. I guess it all depends on what your reference point is
- habit and practice. op himself said he believes gimp can do wonders, but he's migrating from adobe and is accustomed to photoshop's shortcuts, ui and workflow.
  imho, people go wrong expecting same experience in different application. yes, gimp works very differently but when migrating, one should count on different ui and logic. afterall, ps also have learning curve in the start and none complains.
  it's similar to users migrating from windows to linux, expecting same windows ui and workflow, blaming linux bad.
  
  When all my experience with image manipulation programs was paint.net and I wanted something more powerful I tried gimp. I hated it. I saw it was powerful but the ux just isn’t great. It’s really complicated and unfriendly for new users. When I then tried using photoshop, it was really easy to get into. And that’s a general problem with foss. Most big closed source programs had millions spent on ux research. Most foss programs never think about the average user but are instead by professionals for professionals.

Nothing currently can compete with Adobe Photoshop. Unless they port it to linux. It would take open source devs serious time to catch up to Photoshop development. Plus without making millions of dollars for decades, the development of another application of that scale and complexity would be a serious undertaking. That said GIMP as you know is probably the best "alternative". For me I just dual-boot and use windows for basically Adobe Suite. All other times I use linux. However I learned GIMP a long time ago so I am comfortable using it for what it can do, and I'm probably faster in GIMP than PS. I am not a professional graphic designer etc. though.

If not, why?
How many man-hours of work were already spent in the development of Photoshop, its plugins, etc? How much has that cost? On what scale of time was that spread around? How much money have designers put into them by buying licenses (now subscriptions) of Adobe's suite?
If you want an alternative for Linux that can match Photoshop, you need to be willing to support the R&D costs that have been paid off by Adobe throughout the decades of its development. Are you willing to do it?
- What we really need is Photoshop in Linux. Yeah the free alternatives are super cool and definitely fine for lighter and more occasional use, but unfortunately I just don't think they'll ever be good for professional and more advanced hobby usage. I really fuckin hate adobe but at the same time Photoshop just is really good. We really do need a real competitor to Photoshop though, be it paid or free because Adobes business practices are getting ridiculously bad.
  I'm super glad davinci resolve exists for video editing. Obviously not 100% feee and open source, but again it's hard to believe a completely open solution could ever compete with adobes offering as well as davinci does. It's both super nice to use, you can use it free or pay the imo very reasonable price for the professional license, which includes free upgrades for life! And wait, it also works on linux!! Almost unbelievable. I only wish it had h264 support on Linux for the free tier, but oh well... Nothing's perfect :)
  
  As Linux continues to rise in popularity, we might eventually see a Linux version. But unfortunately, most design firms use Macs, since Apple has put so much money into making them good for that, so there's little incentive for Adobe to work on making Photoshop work under Linux, even using something like Wine.

Nothing can touch Photoshop. They pay developers good salaries to implemend new features. For people who do media prouction and photography for $150,000, they only care about time, nothing else. I will always tell them to use Mac or Windows and Photoshop to get work done in a hurry and get paid.
GIMP does not exist or is s laughing joke for people who work full time in graphic design and photo production.
- Hard disagree. Affinity Photo is on par. It. Is worse in a few areas (AI, especially) but better in others.

photopea.com is actually pretty great, much easier to use than gimp with similar (or even better) feature set.
- This exists, but it has the downside of being a web app rather than a native application. Can't use it offline for instance.
  
  You can use it offline as long as you load it up before going offline.
  Photopea runs completely in your device, just like Sketch or Photoshop do. It does not upload any of your files to the internet. You can load Photopea.com, disconnect from the internet and keep using it completely offline. None of your files ever leaves your computer.
  From https://www.photopea.com/learn/
  
  Photopea-Offline.
- Oh, this seems like a great alternative! Doesn't feel as snappy, (and I'm not sure if there's a performance hit with it being a webapp rather than native?) but this'll do wonders! Thanks for the suggestion!
  
  I haven't noticed any performance issue so far. I think they use wasm which help with speed. Too bad it's not open source, but the fact it's developed by a single guy working on it full time is actually very interesting, considering the webapp is actually work better than some apps developed by bigger teams. It can even edit PDF and gif!

if learning gimp is such a roadblock then i doubt anything will seem good to you. it really sounds like you're looking for a clone of photoshop, rather than an alternative to photoshop, and i don't think such a thing exists. any reasonably complicated software will have a learning curve to it, so you may need to pick between continuing to use windows and photoshop, or putting more time than you'd rather into learning something new.
as to why there aren't any clones of photoshop, i expect it is because it would be a lot of work, and they'd constantly be scrambling one step behind to implement whatever updates photoshop gets, so no matter how much effort was put into such a project, it'd still get viewed as a second rate copy of photoshop. if you want to make a graphics program, might as well focus on making it good and making it your own, rather than chasing adobe's coat-tails, y'know?
- They're two different tools, yeah - I get that. But in the end, I want them to do the same thing. Think just, I've learned how to use a screwdriver over the years. I'm fast and efficient with the screwdriver, and I find it reliable. But now, I'm forced to learn to use a hammer. Both will, in the end, achieve similar results.
  Okay, maybe I'm just going to have to learn how to use a hammer then? That would be no problem - if the hammer wasn't such an unintuitive mess of a tool that just doesn't work like how I would expect it to. It's just going to take a lot of time, that I really don't want to invest, just to "get comfortable" with the large drawbacks this hammer has.
  I'm not opposed to learning a new tool. I'm opposed to learning a tool which just gets in the way, over and over.
  
  Your comparison is out of whack.
  You're comparing brands of screwdrivers with different shapes of handles, instead of screwdrivers and hammers.
  There are no alternatives that are hidden gems, they would have risen to the top. GIMP is it.
  I have switched to GIMP many years ago and by now Photoshop is what feels weird. That's simply a factor of the unknown. If you are not willing to learn a new flow, then I'm pretty sure you will disregard anything that isn't Photoshop itself.
  Perhaps install a VM in VirtualBox and set it to seamless mode.

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.

One of the main reasons my wife hasn't taken the Linux plunge is Photoshop support and a lack of feature-complete alternatives with sane UI design choices. We would gladly pay for a Linux version of Photoshop at this point.
It"s dawning on me now as I write this that Proton could be the secret sauce that slays this monster. Has anyone tried adding Photoshop as a non-Steam app to the Steam client, lately?
- Proton is designed for games. Have you tried just using regular wine? I bet if you google “wine photoshop linux tutorial” tons of them will pop up

After some time living with Gimp/Krita etc. you will learn to do the things you did with Photoshop. It does takes some time and research/learning. I was real comfy with PS and do miss it but the more I've gone without, the more I've found ways to tackle the things I need to do with alternatives.

It's not a native app, but have you tried photopea?

GIMP is made that way on purpose.
It can do lots of magical things, but it seems like the developers tried to make it as different as possible just for the sake of being different.
I'm sure that if you bring up something to a developer of GIMP that "isn't like Photoshop because it's buried under 4 menus", the only thing the developer will do to address the issue is release an update that then buries the feature under 5 menus.
They got their weird software with its weird name and they are PROUD of how weird it all is.
All I can suggest with it is to keep searching Google or YouTube on how to do things with it.
I've mostly used Affinity and GIMP over the years. Although my work just got me Photoshop so that I can explore some of its "smart" AI stuff to help with some things.
- but it seems like the developers tried to make it as different as possible just for the sake of being different.
  They might actually be trying to avoid getting sued by Adobe.

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.

Are there no good alternatives to Photoshop?
If you want “Photoshop but not named Photoshop”, then no. If you want something that actually fits the definition of “alternative to”, then yes: Gimp.

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.

Maybe try photopea?
- Came to post this. I use photopea to do photo edits at work
  
  When internet connection is great... photopea is.... a viable alternative... sadly in 3rd world country, internet sucks... :'(

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

If you like an online one , you can use photopea.

Maybe Darktable is an option for you.
https://www.darktable.org/
- Darktable is a digital negative developer. Not a photo manipulator.
  It's more like the free alternative to Lightroom than Photoshop
- Hmm, I'm getting "Connection refused", seems like they are having server issues?

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.

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
- 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:
  https://www.pinta-project.com/
  You can also find it on Flathub and the Snap store.

I vaguely remember there are some UI overhauls for GIMP to make it look more like photoshop. Can't remember what they are called though.
- PhotoGIMP?
  
  Wow! I didn't know this project was still alive. Thanks.

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.

Once I saw a video review of various Photoshop alternatives. All the guy did was just draw a face and knocked a point every time something was different then photoshop. Now changing alt+t to alt+y or what ever does take time to relearn. Which yeah it is true for him that all these programs will be slower the photoshop. But photoshop would be slower for someone that spent years learning kirta and then moved over to photoshop.
Why are the shorcuts not a simple 1 to with photoshop? Maybe language barrier, maybe just random choice from developers, maybe there is some trade or patent that photoshop has. I don't really know.
Given enough time and practice you will relearn on the short cuts, and best way to get things done with gimp and krita.

I use krita plus darktable. Together they give me everything I need.
You are correct that Krita is not a photo editor on its own. But it is also not designed to be. Linux developers have less of a one tool for every job ideal. Due to not needing to compete the same way commercial developers do.

It depends on what you are doing, but there are lots of viable free alternatives. In addition to GIMP you mentioned, take a look at Darktable if you do photo editing. Any piece of complex software takes time to learn.

It might be more web design leading but my company’s designers have switched to Figma, which is web based and has allowed me to work with their files for dev on Linux.
- Not exactly what I'm looking for, unfortunately. Thank you, though. For UI/UX, I prefer Lunacy as it's native and pretty much the same thing as Figma. Penpot works good too, though it's still very much in development.

I want everyone who says "just use GIMP" to draw a box in gimp
- That's easy, I just tried it and I haven't used GIMP that much in total and not at all in the previous year and a half.
  You can draw a box with the paintbrush tool. Or if you want the lines to be totally straight, use the Paths tool, then when you’re done marking the lines you want (with or without curves) you click “stroke path” and get a window to select how you want the stroke to be. And I figured this out very quickly as a user not very well versed in GIMP.
  As I also wrote in this comment; GIMP is meant to be an Image Manipulation Program, not a drawing program. You generally don't use a screwdriver to drive nails into wood, you've got a hammer for that. Sure, you can use a screwdriver for it in a pinch, but it's not going to do it well. Use the tools most appropriate for the thing you're actually trying to do.
- I use GIMP rarely but a quick search shows that you can use Shift-click to force straight lines or Shift-Ctrl-click to limit both the angle as well. https://thegimptutorials.com/how-to-draw-rectangle-square-box/
  I half-remembered the Shift-click.
- Looking past your downvotes, this is another good example of why I find it difficult to learn GIMP. As far as I know, you need to use a box selection to draw a box? Like border that selection or something? In what way is that intuitive from any perspective? It feels more like a workaround, rather than a solution.
  
  The process for a box is rectangle select tool(right click)editstroke selection.
  If I remember correctly it used to be worse. It was Rectangle Tool, Edit, Selection to Path, Stroke Path
  I love/hate gimp but I've used it for years because it's faster and easier than cracking photoshop on a new device.
  
  You can draw a box with the paintbrush tool, though. That also fixes your thing about triangle. Or if you want the lines to be totally straight, use the Paths tool, then when you're done marking the lines you want (with or without curves) you click "stroke path" and get a window to select how you want the stroke to be.
  That's either selecting the paintbrush and drawing directly (1 click and drawing) or selecting the paths tool, making the path, and choosing the line style (1 click + however many points needed + 1 click + selecting parameters (I just went for the default to test) + 1 click to confirm).
  But then again; GIMP isn't meant to be a drawing program, it's Image Manipulation Program. Use the right tools for the right things.

Is there no way to run PS on Wine? Seems like that would be a compromise but I’ve never tried it.
- There is a Photoshop CC installer for Linux hosted on Github. I've tried it - it works. It's just not a great experience. Saving files is a pain, because the export option does not exist. You need to use Save As, and that only works with a hacky workaround.
  The UI doesn't update until you do something that forces it to re-draw (like zooming or panning), which is a real pain when transforming or moving layers - for example. Plus, the UI doesn't scale. You need to use Photoshop in complete fullscreen otherwise parts of the UI will be missing.
  AI filters do not exist, for obvious reasons. However, most other filters work fine.
  And most obviously, performance has an extreme degradation. It's really slow.
  But yeah, would probably get a "Bronze" rating on WineHQ, which is better than not working at all - I suppose. It's progress?
  
  Oh wow, that doesn’t sound like a nice experience at all. I wonder if older versions of PS work better with Wine since it could be an option if you don’t need the latest features.
  
  And there's the issue of tablet pressure! As an amateur artist I was ok with most of the peculiarities of Ps on Wine (even the weird full-screen deal that you mentioned), but even after extensive tinkering it would only register my Wacom pen strokes as single spots or full-pressure lines. Apparently this bug is pretty old, and the underlying problem is way more difficult to solve than it first seems (esp to a linux noob like me). I've heard photoshop cs2 can avoid this bug (and it worked fine for me) but that version of Ps looks very different than what I'm used to, having been a longtime cs6 and cc user.
  I ended up mainly using SAI on that system--which ran very well on Wine--but it has fewer bells and whistles and there are certain tools like liquify that don't offer the same degree of control in Krita or GIMP (as far as I could tell). If my laptop hadn't been struggling so much, I think I probably would've shifted more towards Krita but somehow it ran much worse on the linux system than the previous windows system, regardless of which version I tried. It's a difficult problem to troubleshoot if you don't know tech stuff very well - . -
- Adobe software, at least semi modern versions do not work through wine. At least last i checked a few months ago
  
  Of all the design decisions in GIMP that seem to make it so weird or different to someone coming from Photoshop, Adobe has put in 2X the amount of design choices into their software simply to try to thwart piracy.
  The amount of stupid libraries and processes it loads and "requires" to run is just crazy.
  A lot of it became apparent when Apple dropped 64-bit support a few years back.
  Developers had a decade to update everything to 64-bit. All the fancy (and expensive) Adobe apps were 64-bit, but all their licensing dependencies and anti-piracy libraries were strangely still 32-bit.
  People with legit copies couldn't run anything after upgrading macOS. Only those with cracked/pirated versions (that didn't load the 32-bit libraries) could actually use the software.
  I have no doubt that the mess of libraries and copy protection that Adobe "requires" would prevent their software from working under WINE.

Web based, try Pixlr. Very similar

I wish I could get over the learning curve with GIMP but tbh my current workflow involves a windows 10 virtual machine for Photoshop. It works for my needs without GPU pass through.
- Something like https://xkcd.com/1172/ ?

Have you tried playing with AI like stable diffusion ?

All the software developers will say "there's GIMP" and then anyone who's actually used GIMP will laugh in their face, amd now you see why so much of the open source community is such shit.

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