Photoshop Alternatives For Website Designers
It pains me to say it, but Photoshop is pretty much done in the eyes of the many. Not because it stopped being useful — not at all; this has to do mainly because Adobe — the company that releases the program — asks too much for what used to be the only raster graphics editor worth your while. But when Adobe decided to go with the subscription model and upped the price to $20.99/mo, many agreed that enough was enough.
In our eyes, using Photoshop for web design is no longer a logical thing to do. But what is the best graphical editor for website designers?
Read also: What Apple’s Reveal Of Freeform At WWDC 2022 Means For Web Designers — And Figma
Best graphical editors for website designers
Photopea
Best free graphical editor for web development?
It looks very familiar, doesn’t it? In fact, it’s more or less the exact copy of the Photoshop interface, except that it’s free and works in your browser. And that is its main advantage. You don’t have to relearn if you already know Adobe’s UI, and you can do quite a lot of things with this tool for free. It even works offline now — open it once, and it’s ready to go whenever.
Photopea was created by Ivan Kutskir, a 31-year-old programmer from the Czech Republic. In his latest AMA on Reddit, he confirmed that in 2021, it was used 120 million times.
GIMP
Designing a website in Photoshop is easy, but can you handle GIMP?
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is not new. People have been trying to use it instead of Photoshop for many years, mainly because it’s free and open-source and works on any OS.
GIMP has many features typical of Photoshop and is very customizable, but the UI takes a lot of getting used to. It’s pretty unwieldy, which is why it’s not as popular as it could’ve been. Another reason is that it’s quite resource-intensive.
Pixelmator Pro
A new kid on the block, Pixelmator Pro is what website designers use more and more.
In the last few years, Photoshop stopped being the only serious player on the market. Many experienced designers started looking for alternatives, and as a result, Pixelmator Pro became more and more popular.
Let’s start with the negatives: Pixelmator Pro exists only for Mac; there’s no Windows or Linux version. It might be a bummer for some, but the decision to concentrate on one OS makes sense since Mac has always been a platform for creative types.
Now to the positives. Pixelmator Pro is a gorgeous program with smooth and intuitive UI that’s easy to understand. Among the powerful PS alternatives, it’s one of the easiest ones to master, although the list of its features is quite impressive. The concept is simple: only the essential buttons are on the screen, while the rest are hidden away. There’s also machine learning (it was one of the first editors to integrate it) and even Photos integration. This means you can edit your photos without even opening the program!
And while Pixelmator Pro is not free, it doesn’t have a subscription fee. And $39.99 is a fair price.
Affinity Photo
A powerful graphics editor that’s easy to learn.
Affinity Photo is yet another alternative to Photoshop that appeared in recent years. This powerful editor has a lot of PS features and can completely replace it for work with raster graphics. Its UI is also quite similar to Photoshop, making relearning easier.
Affinity also uses Smart Objects by default, while in Photoshop you have to convert layers manually. Live Previews is yet another winning feature, allowing you to check the effect before applying it.
Unlike PS, Affinity Photo is relatively lightweight and doesn’t take up as many resources. And yes, once again, there’s no subscription model — the program costs $49.99.