this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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Digital Art

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I miss making artwork (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by fccview@lemmy.world to c/digitalart@lemmy.world
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Photoshop it's pretty damn expensive nowadays so I had to cancel my subscription a year and half ago due to specific circumstances I was in. For as much as I like to lie to myself about it, nothing gets close to how good it is. Photopea is kinda good but 20 layers in and the whole machine starts begging for mercy, gimp plain sucks, tried few open source/selfhostable alternatives and nothing takes the cake.

Anyone know of any valid alternative? I may need to start giving my money back to Adobe after all.

All images were made by myself, from the ground up, using various pixabay/envato elements images, there's a layer by layer video of the first one, some layers are grouped so it feels like an image is being dumped in, I just made it a while back to explain the process to somebody and it's still on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQWMuSFkTOQ

There's also similar videos on my instagram page fccview it's not very active, no need for follows, just giving as much info as possible to understand the process ♥️

Hope you like them :)

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[–] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Awesome images. Krita is pretty good, free and open source. I still mainly use photoshop, but CC 2014. It works for me, Maybe you can find a non suscription version sailing the high seas?

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yup. Really seems like that's my best option, thank you ♥️

[–] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I know of this resource, haven't tried it myself tho. Hope it helps

https://wiki.dbzer0.com/genp-guides/guide/#guide-2

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately it's for windows only, I don't have a windows machine I'm afraid :( Thank you tho, that looks very resourceful. Tons of useful stuff, hopefully somebody else will stumble across this post and find it useful!

[–] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] fccview@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I'm loving the knowledge 🤜🤛

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Affinity is really close and free now. I think you have to pay for the AI features.

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't really care for AI features, but I just can't seem to be able to do anything with Affine, it feels closer to lightroom than Photoshop not gonna lie, maybe I am just not using it right, or maybe I got the wrong version?

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you using this one? https://www.affinity.studio/photo-editing-software

I don't use the Canva version and it looks like at the top you can switch between Pixel, Vector & Layout, so basically, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign(?). Maybe you're in the wrong section?

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

That sounds very likely! I'll give this another try, I'd love to be able to feel versatile enough to use Affine too, especially as I wouldn't be able to install high sea versions of photoshop on my work laptop and I use that more than anything else lol

[–] QuirkyRaccoon1156@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I was using the Affinity apps before Canva bought them, still do actually. Amazing! It’s the best Adobe alternative I’ve found to date. The whole suite is good

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Dude these look incredible… I can only recommend learning to sail with adobe, or using krita or affinity

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Thank you, it really does seem to be the general consensus haha

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Cheers! Awesome art.

Photoshop it’s pretty damn expensive nowadays

🌊

High seas aside, I don’t know anything about how drawing works, but I’ve seen good things with Krita. I found this as well, which lists some animation/drawing apps all above my head: https://www.freeartresource.com/

Photo/video is more my thing. In fact, I’m hunting for something that can get HDR PQ images out of RAW stills, and it’s tricky.

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! Photoshop is one of these things that's extremely frustrating to.. uhm.. sail with lol

I'll have a look at the site, photo is also my thing, all of these are photo manipulations with little drawing to help get everything together well enough ♥️

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Oh awesome! Well, DXO is great for photo work as long as you stay SDR. Gimp does kinda suck, sadly.

And I, uh… well, Adobe stuff is out there, you just have to use the classic versions from the right place. I’m testing it out right now.

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I'd accept a lovely DM with very legit urls, as long as it's for Macos 😆

[–] sirimeow@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Amazing art! Really really like the style

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Thank you SO much <3

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

can't you find an old Photoshop cd from when we could buy software instead of subscribing?

an older PS may not be the latest thing but it still works fine

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'd be happy with anything above cs2 to be honest with you. Don't need any of the fancy AI stuff, auto subject cut would be a plus, but I can live without and use pen tool like good old days.

That is not a bad should, I just assumed they wouldn't work but actually you make a lot of sense wise person on the internet!

I'll scour eBay and sail a little and see what I can find ♥️

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

🤜🤛

[–] fccview@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Annoyingly, after.. uhm... "buying" an old version of photoshop I learned the hard way that my mac only allows 64bit applications and any old photoshop version is 32bit. HOW SAD is that? :/

I'm unfortunately back to the drawing board lol

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

that 32/64bit wall :/

I've never tried this but a search gives

The easiest method is this (but keep in mind that it costs money): Buy a copy of Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion if you don't already own one. These prorgrams are designed mostly for running Windows on a Mac, but you can also use them to create a virtual machine that runs macOS in a window on your Mac desktop. Parallels is easiest to use, but VMware Fusion isn't far behind.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-run-32-bit-apps-in-macos-catalina