figma is not free software, and neither is davinci resolve. use penpot and kdenlive.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Figma? No, I won't fall for that again!
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 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 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.
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Surely there's something better than Gimp.
Krita, definitely, though it's still not as complete in capability it's a much better analogue
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.
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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!
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.
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It tends to be pretty straightforward about what an alternative can and can't do. The tags work well for searching so you can exclude paid or freemium apps.
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.
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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.
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I need a Lightroom alternative, on linux.
Darktable is what you are looking for.
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This year i first saw an ad for Photoshop, i see this as a sign of them losing. Keep up the good work folk!
Please... Let Gimp die already.. Krita is actually made by humans for humans
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.
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