IMAGE EDITING SOFTWARE FOR THE PC
Adobe Photoshop
Photo manipulation wouldn’t
be where it is today without
Adobe’s Photoshop program.
The pioneer of image editing
was added to the Oxford
English dictionary as far back
as 2006 and is now equally
known as a verb as it is a piece
of software.
Photoshop is a raster image
editing suite for macOS and
Windows, but there are also
lighter versions available for
mobile phones. You can use
this application for image
editing, graphic design, or
digital paintings.
It has become the industry
standard now and though
alternatives are getting better,
Photoshop is the best all-
around package.
Of course, all this expertise
comes at a price. You’ll need
Adobe’s Creative Cloud and
then pick a plan that suits you.
You’ll be expected to pay a
minimum of $31. 50 a month
if you want a contract-free
license, or a prepaid $ 240 a
year. That works out cheaper
in the long run, but is still a
hefty sum for one program.
If you are planning to use
other Adobe programs, such
as Illustrator, it’s best to find a
suitable deal on their site.
Affinity Photo
With a one-off payment and
similar tools, Affinity Photo
is a rival to Photoshop. It was
released as a free beta test
version in February 2015 and,
following a huge amount of
interest, was fully released in
July that same year.
Previous to this, Serif,
the company behind Affinity,
had a product named Serif
PhotoPlus for Windows that
was another image editing
suite but this was discontinued
following the release of
Affinity Photo.
It offers a similar layout
and selection of tools as its
Adobe Photoshop rival, but
with a 60fps pan and zoom,
it’s a little upgrade. If you
go from this application to
Photoshop you’ll definitely see
the difference between the
two. Affinity Photo looks much
silkier and gives it an illusion
of a performance increase and
a snappier application helps
with your productivity.
Overall, it’s a solid
application that closely rivals
the industry standard. The
main benefit though is the
one-time payment with no
subscription. So if you are
trying out image manipulation
this could be a great first
application. Of course, like
Photoshop, both offer trials.
GIMP
The awkwardly named GIMP
actually stands for GNU Image
Manipulation Program. It is a
cross-platform image editor
available on GNU/Linux,
macOS, Windows, and more.
The one thing that makes
GIMP so good is its versatility.
Its open-source nature
means that you can change
its source code and distribute
your changes if you want to.
Sure, most people won’t take
advantage of this but it’s there
for good measure.
GIMP is a good all-rounder
that offers high detailed
manipulation for graphic
design work. Though it
doesn’t quite match up to the
high standards set by Adobe
Photoshop, this community-
driven and developed software
has all the tools suitable for
you to get the job done. Its
great color management
features ensure high-quality
color reproduction across
physical and digital media.
GIMP also has solid
programming integration,
which means customizable
features and community-made
plug-ins. Whether that is
image editing, graphic design,
GIMP is a solid application, and
best of all, it is free.
$54. 99 , http://www.affinity.serif.com
$239.8 8 prepaid annual plan, $21.99 prepaid
monthly plan, $ 31 .4 9 contract-free monthly plan,
http://www.adobe.com
$Free, http://www.gimp.org
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