Free photo editing software

Bowey123

What is the best free photo editing software?

Keep_pedalling

There is no best for every person. GIMP is one of the most powerful out there, but I would not recommend it for someone with little photo editing experience who just wants to crop and adjust the light levels. 

Neil_Jones

Bowey123 said:

What is the best free photo editing software?

For what purpose exactly?

If you just want to paint over something that's easy to do the stock Paint app/program can do that.

Undervalued

Keep_pedalling said:

There is no best for every person. GIMP is one of the most powerful out there, but I would not recommend it for someone with little photo editing experience who just wants to crop and adjust the light levels. 

GIMP looks superficially similar to Adobe Photoshop but is very different in some respects. It is complex and powerful but has fallen well behind the market leader regarding the latest AI based functions etc.

However, it costs nothing at all to try and indeed keep if you like it.

The free Windows Photos App is really more than enough for many people. If you are a Mac user then Apple Photos is better still and both are free!

Beyond that, if you have an adequate machine to run it and need even some of its power then Photoshop (including both versions of Lightroom and various other free odd and ends) cost less than one cup of coffee out per week!

paradigital

If you are adept with Adobe Photoshop, try pixlr in your web browser.  It’s my go-to if I need Photoshop-like features when I’m at a PC without Adobe PS.

goodread

Back in the day I liked Irfanview, free and fairly easy to use. It's still around. 

mksysb

I use Darktable or Gimp.  Darktable, if I want to adjust colours saturation etc., for printing.  Gimp for most other types of editing.
My son uses https://www.photopea.com/  which is an online editor.  He gets good results from it.

Undervalued

mksysb said:

I use Darktable or Gimp.  Darktable, if I want to adjust colours saturation etc., for printing.  Gimp for most other types of editing.
My son uses https://www.photopea.com/  which is an online editor.  He gets good results from it.

Darktable is (one of) the free / open source programs that imitate Adobe Lightroom Classic. Whilst fairly powerful, like Gimp, it has fallen well behind the market leader in recent years. It will also install as a "plug in" to Gimp to imitate Adobe Camera Raw for opening camera specific RAW files. It generally works but it is frankly a bit clunky!

I suppose it depends what your requirement are and how important it is to you to save the price of a coffee each week........

outtatune

Key question is: do you want to edit parts of an image (remove an ex, take a kilo off the waistline) or the entire image (tweak the contrast, soften the edges)

butterflymum

A local photographer, who is running a course I have been attending, recently suggested the free Snapseed app to the class. As usual, with any software/app, it is worth trying it out to see if it suits your needs.

Phossy

Google photos is probably as good a starting point as any as it is available on PC, Mac, Android and iOS. Snapseed as mentioned above is an excellent app for phones. For more complex stuff and raw editing, then Gimp and Darktable, again as mentioned above, are your go tos for a PC.