What photo / graphics editor do you use, if any?

What do you do when you need to crop a photo for your site, or to make a complex svg? What tool do you turn to?

I’m using Photoshop. But there is a good free alternative to Photoshop called Krita. Very similar software.

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For photo-editing I’m using GIMP (open-source):


This is ok for me but I am not a professional.

For vector-graphics (SVG) there is Incscape (open source):
https://inkscape.org
I played around with it a little bit but I don’t need SVG-editing often. I think it requires some more work to get used to it.
Inscape “internal format” is also SVG.

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I’m using the Affinity apps…

Photoshop equivalent:

Illustrator Equivalent:

They are not free, but they are exceptionally well priced for their power, even more so if you pick them up during one of their frequent sales. Also worth noting is that they are not subscription based, unlike Adobe’s suite of apps. They are both made by a company called Serif, a well respected creative apps developer, who have been around since the 80’s,

IMO the interface of both Affinity Photo and Designer is far superior to the above mentioned free options (which in itself, makes them worth picking up), and also superior to Ps and Ai as they are less cluttered. Furthermore, there is an abundance of online tutorials on how to use these apps, with whole YouTube channels dedicated solely to their usage. Affinity’s own video tutorials are also excellent and to the point, serving as a video manual for all the features of their apps.

To top off the package, they have an excellent active forum with many helpful members with extraordinary skills, so you are never left wondering how to achieve something or stuck with a problem with nowhere to turn.

All of the above more than justifies the small investment you’ll need to make to pick them up. I think you may have just missed a sale, but IMO, you shouldn’t hesitate to pay full price if you’re looking to pick something up immediately. Alternatively, you can use the above mentioned apps and see how you get on with them, until another Affinity sale comes around :wink:

As you can probably guess, I cannot recommend them highly enough :slight_smile:

Oh, and they also have iPad versions of both of their apps. Again, very affordable & stunningly powerful!..Every feature in the desktop versions is available on the iPad versions.

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Thanks for replies guys. Since I don’t plan to do design professionally I don’t think it makes sense to shell out money for adobe suite, but I would like some raster and vector program to do basic stuff for personal projects or whatnot. I’ve messed around with GIMP and inkscape a little before, but found them unintuitive coming from adobe products. Would probably get used to them given time though. Haven’t heard of Affinty apps before, but they look interesting. Will definitely check them out! Thanks. :slight_smile:

Yeah, Gimp and Inkscape UI is…not good after using Adobe for any length of time. Affinity stuff is fantastic though if you want to drop a little cash — not subscription either, which is great.

My home machine is Linux, which has a dearth of good apps, and I did use Gravit Designer, which has excellent UI and most of the things you want from a vector illustration app. But they just got bought by Corel and switched to payed subscription service, and the free version was gutted of useful features. Akira looks like it will fill the gap for a design app with good UI on Linux, though it’s not quite finished yet.

Krita is a pretty good Photoshop-alike (the way brushes work is brilliant), though it’s primarily a painting app.

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Nice! So that’s 2 votes for Affinity. Just watched a couple tuts on it and think I’ll give it a shot. I like that I can get both a raster and vector editor from them so I don’t have to learn 2 unrelated programs. Appreciate your help!

You’re welcome :slight_smile:

Just as a note, I noticed you didn’t mention any specific features that you were looking for in a raster editor and only that you wanted something to make complex svg files. If your raster needs are minimal, you may well get away with just getting Affinity Designer to begin with. Their apps have ‘personas’ and Affinity Designer includes a ‘pixel’ persona, which has basic image editing tools included. It might be worth looking to see if this trimmed down tool set would work for your use case before buying both apps.

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Hello!!! I use a photo editor to process photos Amadine. More information you can learn at https://amadine.com/tutorials/simple-shapes-drawing

GIMP or Photoshop. GIMP is free of charge. Photoshop is a paid one with a 7-day free trial.

In general, I like to use free editors to make images. I recommend you use GIMP, it’s very easy. GIMP

As a professional graphic designer, I am using Photoshop.I think it is the best option for me.

I use Pixlr X. The best part of this software is it is easy to use and let you almost every basic photo editing workflow. As I am an amateur, I love Pixlr for its user-friendly interface.
However, you can check out this article that includes a number of free open source photo editing software.