FREE Alternative to Photoshop etc.

[Greg]

The R5 is my first full frame digital camera. I knew it needed a lot of processing power for editing the images.

Besides the £5k for the body and lens, there is the £700 for a new computer. Another £ 200 for a CF card. Will the spending ever stop?

You don't need to invest in post production software. For a start there is Canon's own, if you need to go deeper there is GIMP.

GIMP. Not, in this instance, a sexusl accessory. GIMP is free, advert free, free for ever picture editor that is as good (in parts) as Photoshop. I admit it's not as well laid out as PS. All the functions are there, some will need to be downloaded, for free.

I have been using it on and off for a year. The main advantage is it needs less processing power compared to PS

No need to spend on software when good glass is more important.

Who else is using GIMP? Who is going to give it a go.

GIMP

GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program: The Free and Open Source Image Editor

www.gimp.org

 

[MaraLee]

I first tried Gimp when it hit the market in the late 90s. I had Paintshop Pro at the time, owned by JASC, but bought out by Corel in 2004. I was looking for a free software to recommend to friends and clients that were looking for free software. It was okay for simple editing, but not on par with the paid software. I've since tried it a couple more times over the years and have come to the same conclusion.

I was forced to switch to PhotoShop when I switched to a Mac around Y2K. I tried EVERY photo editing alternative I could find to avoid a PS subscription when they went that route. The thing is, Adobe offers a full suite along with PS. It's not meant to be a stand-alone product. It works in conjunction with Lightroom and Lightroom Classic and a host of other software that can be tailored to different artists' needs. As an added bonus, Adobe throws in a portfolio and hosting site for use as a website along with collaboration tools. This is all starting at $9.99/mo, about the same as just a hosting site alone.

As for the software itself, the last time I checked, Gimp didn't handle RAW files natively. A plugin, like Raw Therapee had to be used, which is really a whole different editing software. So you had to download TWO programs to be able to open your files in Gimp, or you were stuck using JPGs. After all that, which is actually a workaround IMO, you don't get the full power you have with Adobe products. Especially now that they just released a new update yesterday with the upgraded enhancement tool and 70+ new presets for PS, LR and LRc.

I get it, free is nice. And I still do recommend Gimp to people that just can't see paying for editing software. But for post processing large batches of images that need to meet my standards, I'll pay that $10.

If you want super simple and free, upload your RAW files to Google Photo. Click on the photo, choose 'Edit' and choose the 'Auto' option.
BOOM! You've got a processed JPG ready to share or print right from your Google Photo account. There are also presets included and a couple sliders to adjust exposure and I think saturation if you want to have a little control.

 

[Greg]

I'm an amateur. I don't have to worry about meeting deadlines or pleasing clients. Therefore my needs may be very different to someone making a living form pictures. They can put PS down to business expense.

I agree PS has the edge, in fact it has a lot more than the edge, but is loosing ground all the time. There is a raft of plug-ins for GIMP that I have not started to look at.

GIMP still doesn't have RAW editing built in. Last week I needed to lighten 150 or more JPG pictures. I installed a batch process plug-in for free took about 5 minutes to carry out. Took less than 10 minutes to load the files and have them processed and stored in a folder. All for free.

Personally I don't like mucking about with a picture, I do my best to get it right in the camera. Post possessing tends to be adjustments to colour, shade, contrast, etc, or remove distracting elements via sliders. Sometimes I will play with the histogram, still learning how to use that. Much of that can be done in Canon's DPP

For the very simple stuff like copping i use a thing built into Windows 10, don't know what it's called its just there and convenient, its free so what the hell.

My computer contains Intel i9, 32Gb Ram, C; drive 250Gb Solid State, 2x 1Tb hard drives, 28inch 4k monitor. it handles processing of RAW files without lag. I put some of this down to the fact that GIMP is far less bloated compared to other similar software.

GIMP (/ɡɪmp/ GHIMP; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor[5] used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks.

GIMP is released under GPL-3.0-or-later license and is available for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.[4]

GIMP - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[dmiller68]

Gimp is fine and I have used it in the past. Honestly I don't use photoshop much either... Lightroom meets most of my needs. I got a deal through 500px that made the "Adobe" suite under a $100 a year so I have just been using it. In fact I can't remember the last time I looked at what it is costing me but I'm guessing still in that range or my wife would have complained.