Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

miniPaint is a browser-based image editor built with HTML5 canvas technology. It offers a rich set of features including multi-layer support, a wide range of filters and effects (blur, sharpen, emboss, vintage, Instagram-style filters), selection tools, and drawing tools like pencil, brush, eraser, and clone stamp.

Unlike cloud-based editors, miniPaint runs entirely in your browser — no images are ever uploaded to a server. It supports opening and saving in PNG, JPG, BMP, WEBP, animated GIF, and TIFF formats, and can import layers data as JSON. It also reads EXIF data and includes tools like magic wand, content fill, color adjustments, and a histogram.

As a lightweight open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop, miniPaint is ideal for quick edits and basic graphic design tasks without installing software or creating an account. It works offline once loaded and can be embedded in other websites via an iframe.

SnapOtter is a comprehensive self-hosted image manipulation platform that runs in a single Docker container. It bundles over 45 image tools — resize, crop, compress, convert, watermark, color adjust, vectorize, create GIFs, find duplicates, and more — alongside local AI capabilities for background removal, image upscaling, photo restoration, face enhancement, and OCR.

What sets SnapOtter apart is its pipeline system, which lets you chain multiple tools into reusable workflows with unlimited steps and batch process unlimited images at once. Every tool is also available via a REST API with API key authentication, making it easy to integrate into automated workflows.

As a privacy-first alternative to cloud services like Canva, TinyPNG, and remove.bg, SnapOtter processes everything locally — your images never leave your machine. It runs on AMD64 and ARM64, supports GPU acceleration via NVIDIA, and stores no telemetry unless you opt in.

PixiEditor is a universal open-source 2D editor built for artists, game developers, and designers. It combines pixel art, digital painting, vector graphics, and animation capabilities in a single intuitive interface.

Version 2.0 introduces three integrated toolsets — Pixel Art, Painting, and Vector — that can all be used on the same canvas. You can mix raster and vector elements freely, then export to PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF, MP4, and more.

The built-in timeline and animation system supports frame-by-frame animation and node-based shader animation. Under the hood, a powerful node graph renders every layer, effect, and connection, enabling procedural art and deep customization.

PixiEditor is written in C# with the AvaloniaUI framework, making it cross-platform for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is actively developed with a strong community and available free as open source.

Krita is a professional, free, and open source painting program built by artists, for artists. It is the leading open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop for digital painting, comic creation, and concept art, and is widely recommended as a Procreate replacement on desktop.

Krita ships with a customizable brush engine, brush stabilizers for smooth lines, vector and raster layers, wrap-around mode for seamless textures, animation tools, and full support for pressure-sensitive tablets from Wacom, Huion, XP-Pen, and others. A growing ecosystem of free brush packs, plugins, and Python scripting makes it highly extensible.

It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and the source code is released under GPL-3.0. Krita is funded by donations, brush pack sales, and a paid Steam version that helps finance development.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most established free, open source image editor. For decades it has been the default Adobe Photoshop alternative on Linux, and it is also available on macOS, Windows, and other Unix-like systems.

GIMP supports layers, masks, channels, paths, custom brushes, plug-ins (in Python and Scheme), and a powerful Script-Fu console for automation. It handles a wide range of file formats, including PSD, XCF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and WebP, and can be extended with community plug-ins such as GIMP PhotoGIMP for a Photoshop-like UI.

Released under GPL-3.0 and developed by a worldwide community of volunteers, GIMP is a strong fit for photo retouching, image composition, graphic design, and illustration work — especially for users who want a full-featured image editor without a subscription.