
A menu runs across the top and panels for brushes and layers and so forth are on the right side. That said, it’s functional and isn't wildly dissimilar from Photoshop in its basic layout, with a toolbox that has Move, Crop, Select, Paintbrush, and so on down the left, and tool options below them (they appear across the top in Photoshop). The GIMP interface looks somewhat like it was left behind in the late 1990s.

The app is not as greedy for disk space as Adobe’s apps, taking just about 1GB at installation. GIMP is also available in the Windows 11 app store and now supports Apple Silicon-based Macs, though be sure to download the version that matches your CPU hardware because there are separate ones for Intel and Silicon. All the versions are available for download from or via BitTorrent.

It supports GNU/Linux, Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Digital UNIX, OSF/1, IRIX, OS/2, and BeOS. GIMP runs on more desktop platforms than most other photo applications. Glimpse is free but solicits donations, while PhotoGIMP is a free patch you apply to GIMP itself. For example, PhotoGIMP tries to mimic Photoshop more closely. These two programs may be more appealing to you than GIMP, as they offer different levels of usability and feature design. Perhaps the closest (and one of the cheapest) is Corel PaintShop Pro, which, at around $50 for a permanent license, does a surprising number of Photoshop's same functions and throws in vector editing.īecause GIMP is open source, you can find photo editing apps that are offshoots of GIMP, such as Glimpse and PhotoGIMP. You can find other software that’s less expensive than Photoshop and doesn’t require a subscription, and in fact we have a whole roundup of Photoshop alternatives. By comparison, you pay a minimum of $9.99 per month for Adobe Photoshop for as long as you plan to use it. If you really love it and want to support it, you can donate to its developers via Patreon. It’s free to download and free to use, and developers can even create their own new software that employs its code. The application is what’s known as FOSS-free and open-source software. Still, if you’re looking for Photoshop-like capabilities but don’t want to pay a dime, GIMP is worth exploring. GIMP's performance also can’t compare with the category leader. But if you use GIMP, you miss out on Photoshop’s polished interface and cutting-edge features such as the recent Neural Filters, Smart Objects, and raw camera file editing prowess. It includes many powerful Photoshop-like capabilities, including layers, plug-ins, painting, text, filters, selection, and masking.


GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is the longtime open-source photo editing alternative to Adobe’s category-leading Photoshop.
