Gimp instead of Krita???
figma is not free software, and neither is davinci resolve. use penpot and kdenlive.
Free as in beer, not as in speech, and DaVinci Resolve at least has a $295 upgrade for additional features, although last time I looked that upgrade is included with certain hardware purchases from Blackmagic.
Yea it’s not free but it’s a once off, keep for ever price.
I’m happy with that
I still like the traditional model for paid software where you pay once, and then future major upgrades can be purchased for a discount; it seems like a fair way for the developer to support continued development while allowing the customer to decide if they prefer to stay on an older version.
Yea I’m completely stepping away from all subscriptions.
The only subscriptions I will pay for is for things like Email etc.
As the person offering the service needs to keep their servers running etc.
I’ve been pretty happy with kdenlive myself.
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Figma is NOT free software. It is proprietary, and hosted.
Resolve is also proprietary.
It said free. Not open source
Difference beeing, you can download resolve onto your pc and use it forever without updating, even if they decide to cancel the free version or get bankrupt. Figma runs entirely web based and if Adobe buys it it can be killed off at any point.
Penpot is a better option here.
Idk about the rest of the software on this list, but presenting gimp as an “alternative” to photoshop seems disingenuous to me.
Gimp is an alternative to photoshop in the same way that a 56K modem is an alternative to a 1 gig fiber line. Yes, they technically do the same job. But to suggest that your experience is going to be comparable to photoshop is a stretch.
I’d suggest Krita before Gimp, and even Affinity (although I’m sure there’s a gotcha coming with that one)
I’ve been using Photoshop for 24 years and I gave Affinity a try. Affinity still has a lot of kinks to work out. Cross compatibility wrt brushes and tools is spotty at best, unusable at worst. UI and workflow/workspace definitely needs improvement. No right click to adjust brush size and no saveable workspace option was a dealbreaker for me.
But is Gimp Affinity’s Gimp? Or is there competition there?
Krita is the way to go. Even has AI retouching add-on if you’re into that.
GIMP is also a massive pain in the ass. Paint.net is the one piece of software I still miss after moving to Linux.
Da Vinci Resolve is great though. Crazy that it’s free and Linux compatible.
I’m switching to Linux right now and I haven’t really looked into replacements for each piece of software. Used Paint.net for at least 10 years, tried Gimp first but didn’t like it. What do you use?
Try Pinta. Unless you do digital painting/illustration, then go for Krita.
Same with Inkscape IMO. Anyone have a different alternative?
Dunno how advanced its vector graphics features are, but krita does support making them at least, you could try that. The overall interface is good at least.
Photopea is pretty good for casual use
The image doesn’t say it’s a replacement, it says it’s an alternative. What piece of sofware would you suggest instead?
Gimpshop i think it’s called at least tries to make the GIMP workflow and UX (including keyboard short cuts) not completely, well, gimped.
Yeah GIMP is shit. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they’re talking about. Inkscape is better than gimp but still suffers from UI issues.
Depends what you are doing. If you are drawing-krita, if you are manipulating images-gimp, making svg stuff-inkscape. I’ve been using gimp long enough that the newest photoshop makes me want to crashout.
Quality features often confuse people.
Nah, pretty sure it was the ai jammed in everything.
So then you admit that pre-AI Photoshop was significantly better than gimp. Thanks
Oh. Hands down. I miss the old creative suites. But the current product? Glitchy pos. Fuck em. Once you use gimp for a few years the pain dulls. Now how you think inkscape is comparable to illustrator is baffling. Is illustrator also a shitshow now?
I wouldn’t actually know. I don’t use Adobe Products.
But if you exclude the AI features, and don’t make “anti-ai” your entire personality, gimp is pretty shit
The GUI/UX is shit. If you wanna design automated workflows from the shell, it can be quite flexible and powerful.
Like they used to have a website that would generate tags or like styled text. They used GIMP for the backend image generation. I thought that was a pretty impressive use case.
Imagemagick.
I’m pretty sure GIMP doesn’t have any kind of UI or UX contributors… it’s all “programmer design”, where finding the rectangle select tool takes 5 minutes and it doesn’t work the way you want it to
Pretty sure neither Figma or Resolve are free software.
A better, free-er alternative to figma would be something like Penpot which works pretty well and is easy to self-host.
Davinci Resolve has a free version that is missing some features. They are important features, mind. But it definitely allows you to edit videos and get a good feel for the software to see if you want to purchase it or you can just keep using the free version even.
So it’s free*.
And the paid version is buy once and get a perpetual license. Very non-scummy for a full professional video editing tool.
On linux I just use Blender for video editing, it does about 95% of what I need
Kdenlive is quite good and foss
Blender is an alternative to 3DS Max in the same way an actual car is an alternative to flintstoning a burnt out wreck. Even in college a lot of our very basic rendering exercises with Max got the whole grade just on demonstrating correct setup because the software is so prone to crashing or taking 20h to do what most alternatives (paid or free) can do in 20 minutes.
You’re saying Blender is better? I’ve only used Blender, but I would believe it. It’s like opposite of how I feel about GIMP.
Yeh, admittedly I have a lot more experience with blender than 3DS Max, but from performance differences alone I’m pretty sure if Max released today without its massive pre-existing industry adoption it would be laughed out of the room.
People who promote gimp likely never actually tried to use that piece of shit. Try Krita instead, holy fuck is it so much better as a useable piece of art software.
Krita is not a replacement for Photoshop though. There is a difference between a software to draw and a software for image manipulation.
by the same logic, neither is gimp.
I learned Photoshop in high school, then tried to use Gimp in college. What a fucking disaster of a program.
Figma ballz
Not much what’s updog with you?
What’s up dog?
Gimp is apparently great if you start with it, but it is not a substitute for Photoshop.
Krita had been great for most of my work.
Can confirm. Never used photoshop, Gimp seems fine to me.
Photopea. It’s not open-source but it’s “freemium”. It’s like a web Photoshop.
You couldn’t pay me to use Gimp. The interface offends me.
You couldn’t pay me to use Adobe. The predatory pricing, required internet, Linux incompatability, file scanning, Adobe Bridge, bad privacy policy, bloated install, useless launcher, DRM, and use of AI offends me.
Techphobic, nonprofessional opinion.
Lol the funniest part is I have a dual Bachelor’s in CS and Graphic Design, and can spell technophobic correctly
can you spell inferiority complex?
You can theme it to change icons and sizes and such, which helps a little. But I agree, the interface is a nightmare. Ever since v3 came out, my layers window has disappeared and I can’t find it. That’s a kind of important panel to hide away :(
Try either crtl +L or from the top menu Windows > dockable dialogs > Layers
You couldn’t pay me to use Gimp. The interface offends me.
Try Photogimp
Figma? No, I won’t fall for that again!
“Not much, what’s figma with you?”
It’s figmover
You know, just hanging with Candice
Try PenPot instead.
How good is it in comparison, feature wise?
Maybe a version or two behind on extra stuff, but core features And workflow are very similar.
Please… Let Gimp die already… Krita is actually made by humans for humans
Gimp 3 is actually a massive improvement and they are releasing updates on a routine basis now. Try Photogimp if you like a more standard interface and layout
I saw it. It was… Ok
Well… For quick text insertion, meme creation, or some very basic photo editing I still boot up Gimp.
But yeah… The newest version of Gimp feels like they updated from a very out dated version to a mostly out dated version.
Yeah…GIMP is kinda shit. It’s probably the one app I’d pay Adobe for to not use GIMP.
lol, I feel you,
you should try Affinity Studio. It’s Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in one
Don’t forget about FreeCad!
They had an update earlier this year that really closed the gap on a lot of features and tools they were missing compared to other more established cad packages.
I like Freecad. I use it because it’s FOSS. But it’s not as easy to use, sadly.
Yeah its insane, i actually feel like im using fully fledged 3d mechanical modelling software now.
Surely there’s something better than Gimp.
Krita, definitely, though it’s still not as complete in capability it’s a much better analogue
Seconded. Krita is significantly easier to use then GIMP.
Krita is mostly for digital artists and digital painting, while GIMP is more for image editing. They aren’t made for the same purpose, even though both can do simple stuff from both worlds.
Except easily drawing circles on GIMP’s part.

Yeahhh, I never understood that. It can’t be that difficult to make a circle tool, right?
To be honest, I don’t know how difficult it would really be, and I know it can be done with plugins. I also know it’s not a tool that you end up using that much with the more advanced workflows (I myself haven’t really needed it in a long time), but it would be nice if we had it.
Isn’t krita for painting and photoshop for photo editing? Does krita do RAW, color grading and such?
yes they are two different use cases.
Whenever I open GIMP I always feel like an 18th century taxonomist’s first time seeing a platypus and assuming it’s an elaborate hoax cooked up by someone with far too much time on their hands. Surely this isn’t software made by humans to do useful things!? This must be a joke!
Kdenlive is fucking awesome and should have been on this list.
























