Alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

Photo thanks to Sanja Gjenero

Adobe Photoshop is the holy grail of image editing software.    You are probably excited about learning to edit your photos.  Most likely you are not excited about shelling out the $600+ to buy the full latest version.  Luckily, you have some other options as a beginner.  Here are a few:

Student Software - If you are a student you can buy software at discounted prices.  Just google ’student software’. You should be able to find Photoshop CS4 for around $200.  A savings of $400.  Not too bad.  You can also find Photoshop Elements (A more basic version) for around $70.

Free Online Image editors -  Free is always a good option, and most of the features should be sufficient for the amateur.  Try them out and you can always choose something more powerful like Photoshop later.  Here’s a link to 10 Free Web-based Alternative to Photoshop.

Free Offline Image Editor - You may also enjoy using GIMP, an open source program very similar to Photoshop.  You can find it at gimp.org This program is surprisingly powerful, considering the surprising price of $0.00

So take the plunge. Get your feet wet in image editing and try some of these free or low cost image editors: Your photos will thank you, and when you’re done let me know what you think of them.  I’d love to hear from you.  Happy Image Editing.