GIMP
Top pickThe long-standing open-source image editor for photo retouching and compositing.
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most complete open-source counterpart to Photoshop for photo retouching, compositing, and image authoring, in development since the 1990s. The 3.x era has modernized it substantially: GIMP 3.0 (March 2025) introduced non-destructive editing for most commonly used filters, better PSD export, and editable text styling, and the project has kept a steady release pace since (3.2.4 as of April 2026). It runs entirely on your own machine with no account, and the honest trade-off is a learning curve: the interface and shortcuts differ from Photoshop's, and some professional features — full adjustment-layer parity, CMYK prepress — are still behind.
What it does well
- +Free and open-source (GPL-3.0-or-later) with decades of development and a large community
- +Deep retouching and compositing tools; non-destructive filter editing since 3.0
- +Big ecosystem of plugins and scripts (Script-Fu, Python)
- +Opens and exports PSD files (within limits) plus virtually every common format
- +Runs fully offline on Windows, macOS, and Linux — no account required
Where it falls short
- −Interface and shortcuts differ from Photoshop — expect a real adjustment period
- −PSD support is partial; complex layered files may not round-trip cleanly
- −No full equivalent of Photoshop's adjustment layers yet, and CMYK/prepress workflows are still limited
- −No built-in generative AI tools comparable to Firefly
Hardware note
Runs comfortably on modest hardware; very large multi-layer files and heavier GEGL filters benefit from extra RAM.
GIMP as an alternative to
Where GIMP shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
GIMP head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.