Is there really no viable alternative for Photoshop on Linux?

I’m starting this off by saying that I’m looking for any type of reasonably advanced photo manipulation tool, that runs natively under Linux. It doesn’t have to be FOSS.

I switched to Linux, from Windows, about three years ago. I don’t regret the decision whatsoever. However, one thing that has not gotten me away from Windows entirely, is the severe lack of photo editing tools.

So what’s available? Well, you have GIMP. And then there’s Krita, but that’s more of a drawing software. And then…

Well that’s it. As far as I know.

  1. GIMP

Now, as someone migrating from Photoshop, GIMP was incredibly frustrating, and I didn’t understand anything even after a few weeks of trying to get into it. Development seemed really slow, too. It’s far from intuitive, and things that really should take a few steps, seemingly takes twenty (like wrapping text on a path? Should that really be that difficult?).

I would assume if you’re starting off with GIMP, having never touched Photoshop, then it’d be no issue. But as a user migrating, I really can’t find myself spending months upon months to learn this program. It’s not viable for me.

No hate against GIMP, I’m sure it works wonders for those who have managed to learn it. But I can’t see myself using it, and I don’t find myself comfortable within it, as someone migrating from Photoshop.

  1. Krita

Krita, on the other hand, I like much more. But, it’s more of a drawing program. Its development is more focused on drawing, and It’s missing some features that I want - namely selection tools. Filters are good, but I find G’MIC really slow. It also really chugs when working with large files.

Both of these programs are FOSS. I like that. I like FOSS software. But, apart from that, are there really no good alternatives to Photoshop? Again, doesn’t need to be FOSS. I understand more complex programs take more development power, and I have no problem using something even paid and proprietary, as long as it runs on Linux natively.

I’ve tried running Photoshop under WINE, and it works - barely. For quick edits, it might work fine. But not for the work I do.

So I raise the question again. Are there no good alternatives to Photoshop? And then I raise a follow-up question, that you may or may not want to answer: If not, why?

Thanks in advance!

FoxAndKitten,

IDK if you can convince it to run on Linux, but I’ve been pretty happy with paint.net lately

It’s basically a newer project like gimp. It’s got the core abilities and appearance of Photoshop. Feature wise, it’s less than gimp or Photoshop, but what it has works decently well

Most importantly for me, the UX is much better than gimp… Not as good as Photoshop, but I find stuff is usually where I’d expect it to be

Obviously it’s built on .net, so theoretically it could run native on Linux… Not sure if anyone has done the work to make that actually happen

s20,

I used to love paint.net back in my Wod ows days. It’s a great middle ground between Paint and Photoshop, and if you only ever do light graphical work, it’s all you need.

If you want something like Paint.net but native to Linux, you should check out Pinta; I’ve used it for years. It’s not going to replace Photoshop, but then it’s not meant to be:

www.pinta-project.com

You can also find it on Flathub and the Snap store.

joel_feila,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

Once I saw a video review of various Photoshop alternatives. All the guy did was just draw a face and knocked a point every time something was different then photoshop. Now changing alt+t to alt+y or what ever does take time to relearn. Which yeah it is true for him that all these programs will be slower the photoshop. But photoshop would be slower for someone that spent years learning kirta and then moved over to photoshop.

Why are the shorcuts not a simple 1 to with photoshop? Maybe language barrier, maybe just random choice from developers, maybe there is some trade or patent that photoshop has. I don’t really know.

Given enough time and practice you will relearn on the short cuts, and best way to get things done with gimp and krita.

allforthebest,

Bruhh GIMP is so hard to use but it’s doing basic stuff I needed like typing text.

If I needed Photoshop or something else I would use GNOME Boxes.

Holzkohlen,
@Holzkohlen@feddit.de avatar

I vaguely remember there are some UI overhauls for GIMP to make it look more like photoshop. Can’t remember what they are called though.

andruid,

PhotoGIMP?

obsolete,

Wow! I didn’t know this project was still alive. Thanks.

ScottE,

It depends on what you are doing, but there are lots of viable free alternatives. In addition to GIMP you mentioned, take a look at Darktable if you do photo editing. Any piece of complex software takes time to learn.

lengsel,

Nothing can touch Photoshop. They pay developers good salaries to implemend new features. For people who do media prouction and photography for $150,000, they only care about time, nothing else. I will always tell them to use Mac or Windows and Photoshop to get work done in a hurry and get paid.

GIMP does not exist or is s laughing joke for people who work full time in graphic design and photo production.

TenderfootGungi,

Hard disagree. Affinity Photo is on par. It. Is worse in a few areas (AI, especially) but better in others.

epocsquadron,
@epocsquadron@kbin.social avatar

It might be more web design leading but my company’s designers have switched to Figma, which is web based and has allowed me to work with their files for dev on Linux.

Swexti,

Not exactly what I’m looking for, unfortunately. Thank you, though. For UI/UX, I prefer Lunacy as it’s native and pretty much the same thing as Figma. Penpot works good too, though it’s still very much in development.

CarlosCheddar,

Is there no way to run PS on Wine? Seems like that would be a compromise but I’ve never tried it.

xenspidey,

Adobe software, at least semi modern versions do not work through wine. At least last i checked a few months ago

BitingChaos,
@BitingChaos@lemmy.world avatar

Of all the design decisions in GIMP that seem to make it so weird or different to someone coming from Photoshop, Adobe has put in 2X the amount of design choices into their software simply to try to thwart piracy.

The amount of stupid libraries and processes it loads and “requires” to run is just crazy.

A lot of it became apparent when Apple dropped 64-bit support a few years back.

Developers had a decade to update everything to 64-bit. All the fancy (and expensive) Adobe apps were 64-bit, but all their licensing dependencies and anti-piracy libraries were strangely still 32-bit.

People with legit copies couldn’t run anything after upgrading macOS. Only those with cracked/pirated versions (that didn’t load the 32-bit libraries) could actually use the software.

I have no doubt that the mess of libraries and copy protection that Adobe “requires” would prevent their software from working under WINE.

Swexti,

There is a Photoshop CC installer for Linux hosted on Github. I’ve tried it - it works. It’s just not a great experience. Saving files is a pain, because the export option does not exist. You need to use Save As, and that only works with a hacky workaround.

The UI doesn’t update until you do something that forces it to re-draw (like zooming or panning), which is a real pain when transforming or moving layers - for example. Plus, the UI doesn’t scale. You need to use Photoshop in complete fullscreen otherwise parts of the UI will be missing.

AI filters do not exist, for obvious reasons. However, most other filters work fine.

And most obviously, performance has an extreme degradation. It’s really slow.

But yeah, would probably get a “Bronze” rating on WineHQ, which is better than not working at all - I suppose. It’s progress?

CarlosCheddar,

Oh wow, that doesn’t sound like a nice experience at all. I wonder if older versions of PS work better with Wine since it could be an option if you don’t need the latest features.

Swexti,

CS6 may work better, but I haven’t tested it. I may give it a shot sometime, though.

coppercatter,

And there’s the issue of tablet pressure! As an amateur artist I was ok with most of the peculiarities of Ps on Wine (even the weird full-screen deal that you mentioned), but even after extensive tinkering it would only register my Wacom pen strokes as single spots or full-pressure lines. Apparently this bug is pretty old, and the underlying problem is way more difficult to solve than it first seems (esp to a linux noob like me). I’ve heard photoshop cs2 can avoid this bug (and it worked fine for me) but that version of Ps looks very different than what I’m used to, having been a longtime cs6 and cc user.

I ended up mainly using SAI on that system–which ran very well on Wine–but it has fewer bells and whistles and there are certain tools like liquify that don’t offer the same degree of control in Krita or GIMP (as far as I could tell). If my laptop hadn’t been struggling so much, I think I probably would’ve shifted more towards Krita but somehow it ran much worse on the linux system than the previous windows system, regardless of which version I tried. It’s a difficult problem to troubleshoot if you don’t know tech stuff very well - . -

Reva,

Darktable if you want to do professional photography editing, and GIMP if you want to modify graphics, pixelart, design flyers or handouts, posters, or whatever else you want to do in a raster editor.

I have been using GIMP since fifth grade in school when we had an intro to photo manipulation, and since whenever I needed something edited, composited or designed. It blows my mind again and again that people online apparently find GIMP hard to use or unintuitive. It’s one of the most normal programs I have ever used. Photoshop on the other hand feels utterly inconceivable to me.

Diabolo96,

Have you tried playing with AI like stable diffusion ?

Hazdaz,

All the software developers will say “there’s GIMP” and then anyone who’s actually used GIMP will laugh in their face, amd now you see why so much of the open source community is such shit.

mrpibb,
@mrpibb@lemmy.world avatar

I wish I could get over the learning curve with GIMP but tbh my current workflow involves a windows 10 virtual machine for Photoshop. It works for my needs without GPU pass through.

CallumWells,

Something like xkcd.com/1172/ ?

ClickToDisplay,
@ClickToDisplay@lemmy.world avatar

Web based, try Pixlr. Very similar

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