If you’re a Mac-using professional photographer, you’re probably already paying $10 a month for Adobe Creative Cloud’s Photography plan, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom. But what about the rest of us, who occasionally edit images but not enough to justify a $120 annual bill? Are there any free Mac image editors?
- Free Photo Editor For Mac
- Photo Editor Software For Mac Like Ms Paint Online
- Software For Mac Free
- Free Photo Editor Software For Mac
- Software For Mac Computers
Having got used for so many years to MS Paint, I need to get familiar with this or any other similar app on Mac. Right now I have downloaded sketchbookexpress which is a free download from apple store. Explore 25+ Mac apps like Paint.NET, all suggested and ranked by the AlternativeTo user community. Paint.NET is a free image and photo editing software. If your looking for more info about Paint.NET like screenshots, reviews and comments you should visit our info page about it. Pinta is a free pixel-based image editor for Mac OS X. One of the most interesting aspects of Pinta is that it is based on the Windows image editor Paint.NET.The developer of Pinta actually describes it as a clone of Paint.NET, so any Windows users familiar with that application may find Pinta to be ideal for their needs on OS X.
A few, but none without compromise. Most of the options either don’t offer that much power, or don’t have the best user interfaces. But if you’re willing to put up with limitations, or put in the time to learn something that’s not necessarily intuitive, you can edit your photos for free. Here are the best choices.
FX Photo Studio Pro – Photo Editor for Mac. Yet another powerful photo editor for mac that will not eat up all your pocket and still act as a digital powerhouse that can add breathtaking effects into your simple everyday picture.
GIMP: Feature Complete With a Steep Learning Curve
In terms of features and flexibility, open source stalwart GIMP is the best free Mac image editor you can find. This layer-based editor supports most file formats, and has all of the tools you need to touch up photos: adjustments for things like color balance and contrast, yes, but also filters and simple drawing tools. You can customize the user interface, putting tools you use regularly front-and-center and burying the tools you don’t.
You just need to find those tools, and figure out how they work. Experience with software like Photoshop won’t help much, because GIMP does things its own way, and expects users to figure those ways out on their own. There’s going to be a learning curve, and it’s going to involve a lot of Google searches. If you’re the kind of person who likes thinking about design, you might end up wondering what exactly the creators were thinking. The GTK interface also doesn’t feel 100% at home on in macOS, and that may turn some diehard Mac users off.
So there are downsides, but they might be worth it, because this is a full-blown photo editor that’s completely free. No ads, no gimmicks: just open source software that you’re free to use as you like.
Fotor: Quick Photo Tweaks From a Simple Interface
If you’re not concerned with flexibility, and just want to quickly make a few changes to your photos, Fotor might be what you’re looking for. This simple app gives you access to a bunch of one-button adjustments. When you load a photo, you’ll see the “Scenes” toolkit, which allows you to choose from one of several lighting adjustments.
There’s not a lot of fine-tuning: just click a button and decide if it looks better. There are similarly simple tools for adjusting the focus, adding text, and cropping your image.
Again, if you’re looking for a full-blown photo editor, this isn’t it. But it’s free, with one tiny ad in the bottom-right corner. It’s worth a look.
Preview or Photos: Built-In Basic Editing Tools
RELATED:Use Your Mac’s Preview App to Crop, Resize, Rotate, and Edit Images
Not everyone realizes this, but you can use macOS’ built-in Preview app to edit images. Just open any image, then click the toolbox icon. A second toolbar of icons for editing images will show up.
From here, you can add simple shapes and draw. You can also adjust the color and contrast levels by clicking Tools > Adjust Color in the menu bar. It’s not the most complete photo editor on the planet, but it gives you access to the basics without any third party software.
RELATED:How to Edit Your Pictures with Your Mac’s Photos Application
Free Photo Editor For Mac
If you organize your photo collection using the built-in Photos tool on your Mac, you can also edit images in Photos. Just open any photo, then click the “Edit” button, which looks like a bunch of sliders.
This will open a variety of editing tools, which let you do things like choose filters, adjust the lighting, or crop the image.
There’s nothing like layer-based editing here, but it’s easy to use and built into software you’re probably already using, so give it a shot.
Paintbrush: Basically Microsoft Paint for macOS
If every one of these options seemed too complicated for you, and all you want is the ability to doodle with your mouse, check out Paintbrush. This open source application is basically paint.exe for you Mac, and it’s glorious. I used it to supplement my wife’s photo, I think it really highlights the nuance of her art.
Use this tool to make similar masterpieces, and not a whole lot more.
Paid, but Worth a Look: Pixelmator
RELATED:The Best Cheaper Alternatives to Photoshop
Pixelmator isn’t free, but it is a great cheaper alternative to Photoshop. It doesn’t offer all the features of Adobe’s premier image editor, but it offers a lot of them, and with a beautiful user interface that won’t hurt your head to use.
You’ve got layer-based editing, advanced effects, and a native user interface that even supports newfangled features like the touch bar. Pixelmator costs $30, but there’s a one-month free trial. That should be more than enough time to figure out if it fits into your workflow.
If none of these tools quite work for you, it might be time to look into some of the other paid, but cheaper photo editors on the Mac. You’d be surprised what you can get for under $100.
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Photoshop is such a powerful brand that, like Google, it's become a verb: nobody really talks about editing an image, it's all about Photoshopping these days. It all adds up to great PR for Adobe, but it might make you believe that no other software could possibly do as good a job as the big PS.
In fact, Adobe doesn't necessarily have the market cornered and its move to the Creative Cloud in 2013 actually helped to spur on a wide range of alternatives to Photoshop. These options can be just as powerful, and produce results that are just as professional.
So whether you're looking elsewhere because you can't afford the subscription, you want to support smaller development houses, or you just don't need all the millions of features that come with Photoshop CC, there's a selection of photo editing software open to you. Here are the best Photoshop alternatives.
Photo Editor Software For Mac Like Ms Paint Online
01. Affinity Photo
- Platform: Mac, Windows, iPad
- Price: £48.99/$49.99 (one-off payment)
Fully compatible with Photoshop and other file formats, Affinity Photo is aimed squarely at professional photographers and designers, and although it is hugely cheaper than Photoshop (with no subscription), its creators argue it's actually better. We think it's perhaps the most serious Photoshop alternative we've seen to date.
It comes with a promise of higher speeds, fewer crashes and unlimited undos but in truth, the amount of improved performance you'll get will probably depend what equipment you're using (it's been specifically designed to take advantage of the latest quad core technology).
Available for both Mac and Windows, if you're looking for an alternative to Photoshop, Affinity Photo is definitely worth investigating.
02. Photopea
- Platform: Web
- Price: Free, Premium from $9 per 30 days
Thanks to continual advances in web technology you don't always need a discrete app to do much of what you'd use Photoshop for, and Photopea is the latest browser-based image editor that can handle a decent chunk of your workflow.
Designed to be an advanced editor with pro tools, Photopea bears a distinct resemblance to Photoshop and features most of the tools you'll need for everyday image work. It'll open most standard file formats such as JPG, PNG and RAW, and it'll accept Sketch, GIMP and even Photoshop PSD files.
Photopea supports layers and layer masks, lets you use blend modes and features a stack of selection tools, from standard marquees through to a magnetic lasso and a quick selection tool. While it doesn't offer the sort of advanced features you'd expect in Photoshop CC such as content-aware fill, it still has a more than enough going on to keep most designers and artists happy, and it's completely free to use.
However if you don't like ads, there's also the option to subscribe to a premium version which gets rid of them and also gives you extra levels of undo - 60 rather than 30.
03. Sketch
- Platform: Mac
- Price: $99/year or try Sketch for free
Sketch is a professional vector graphics app for creatives that has created enormous buzz within the design community, and web designers in particular.
The development team behind Sketch has made it as flexible as possible, with it supporting infinite zooming and vector shapes that are perfect for multiple resolutions. You can build a new graphic from primitive shapes or start a new one with the Vector or Pencil tool.
It has a pleasingly simple UI and has many features similar to that of Photoshop and Illustrator, including layers, gradients, colour picker and style presets. Its popularity means there are also plenty of community-created Sketch plugins you can use to extend its functionality.
04. GIMP
- Platform: Linux, Windows, Mac
- Price: Free
A free, open-source alternative to Photoshop that's been around for donkey's years, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Today it's available in versions for Linux, Windows and Mac.
GIMP offers a wide toolset, similar to Photoshop in many ways, and is a great option if you're looking for a no-cost image editor. The interface differs somewhat from Photoshop, but a version of GIMP is available that mimics Adobe's look and feel, making it easier to migrate over if you're ditching Photoshop.
The full suite of tools is available here – everything you're accustomed to is within easy reach, including painting tools, colour correction, cloning, selection, and enhancement. The team that oversees development has worked hard to ensure compatibility too, so you'll be able to work with all the popular file formats without any trouble at all. You'll also find a very capable file manager built in, along similar lines to Adobe's Bridge.
Overall, this is a great option whether you've either got a limited budget, or want to move away from Photoshop for other reasons.
05. Pixelmator Pro
- Platform: Mac
- Price: $39.99
Pixelmator has been around for a while now, but more recently the team released the Pixelmator Pro. While the previous tool used floating windows, the Pro version has a more usable single-window UI, and offers non-destructive image editing. The team have pared back the interface, which should make it easy to pick up – and there's a 'hidden interface' option you can activate if you just want to see your image, with no distractions.
This Photoshop alternative is geared up especially for use on a Mac, and it supports features like tabs, fullscreen and split view.
Software For Mac Free
06. Pixlr
- Platform: iOS, Android, web app
- Price: Free
Pixlr is a free Photoshop alternative that boasts more than 600 effects, overlays and borders. It also lets you do all the main things you'd expect from a basic photo editor, from cropping and re-sizing to removing red-eye and whitening teeth.
And if you're used to using Photoshop, then you'll find Pixlr's user interface easy to pick up quickly, as it's very similar. This free app is available in both iOS and Android varieties, or use can use it as a web app.
07. Corel PHOTO-PAINT
- Platform: Windows
- Price: $599.99 / £599.99 (entire CorelDRAW Graphics Suite)
PHOTO-PAINT is a dedicated photo editor in the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. The suite has been updated for 2018 to offer a Corel AfterShot 3 HDR support, as well as interactive tools for straightening photos and adjusting perspective. There's also improved stylus control, with the PHOTO-PAINT responding to different pressures, bearing tilt and rotation.
The suite is geared up to work perfectly with Windows 10, offering multi-monitor viewing and support for 4K displays.
08. Paint.net
- Platform: Windows
- Price: Free
Paint.net is a Windows-based alternative to the Paint editor that Microsoft shipped with versions of Windows. Don't let that put you off, though: it's a surprisingly capable and useful tool, available completely free of charge. The software started out life as a Microsoft-sponsored undergraduate project, and has become an open source project maintained by some of the alumni.
The focus is on ease of use, and there's a definite tendency towards photo editing rather than artistic creation. That said, there are a range of special effects available, allowing you to easily create fake perspective, blend and push pixels around the canvas, tile and repeat selections, and so on.
A good range of selection tools, support for layers, and adjustments such as curves and brightness/contrast mean that Paint.net is a great alternative to Photoshop for photo editing, especially if you can do without some of the more recent additions to Photoshop's toolset.
09. SumoPaint
- Platform: Browser or iPad
- Price: Free (basic), $4/mo (Pro)
Free Photo Editor Software For Mac
SumoPaint is a highly capable, free browser-based image editor. All the standard features you'd expect from a desktop tool are present and correct. It's lightweight and quick to load, and the free version is very usable. There's also a paid-for Pro version and a paid-for iPad app.
The standard range of tools and adjustments you'd expect are all included. Brushes, pencils, shapes, text, cloning, gradients, etc are all quickly accessed from the Photoshop-esque floating toolbar. It can also open saved documents from your hard drive, making SumoPaint a perfectly viable option for editing and reediting.
Some tools work in different ways to Photoshop, offering possibilities that would be difficult to match in Adobe's offering. There are, however, limitations that will put off some users.
Software For Mac Computers
10. Acorn
- Platform: Mac OS X
- Price: $29.99
Image editing software Acorn debuted back in 2007 and has provided hobbyists and artists on a budget with a great, affordable alternative to Photoshop ever since. Features of the software include layer styles, non-destructive filters, curves and levels, blending modes and much more.
The most recent edition – Acorn 6 – includes new Scale and Transform options, the ability to use the Clone tool across layers or images, and the ability to use emoji on a path (if you so wish).
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