Hello fediverse penguins!
Being in Linux for 2+ years, I have found alternative solutions for the apps I used on windows. But I can’t find something like Photoshop.
I started using Krita, which is amazing and does lots of things I do, but the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes. Then I found inkscape, which was good for, text and everything else worked fine, but not much of photo editor.
So what next? any recommendations ?
I also use kdenlive for video editing, and rawtherapee for DSLR photos editing.
Since no one else has said it… Pixelorama is somewhat focused on making pixel art and animations, but it’s great at what it does.
the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes.
I dunno what you’re doing but… When you resize text, you usually want to select the text and increase the font size. Sometimes you can render to vector and resize that. But if you resize the text as pixels, then it’ll probably look bad. Generally I try not to render text to pixels or do that last if necessary.
Krita is what I use but I also find text handling difficult so I always do text last.
I started using Krita, which is amazing and does lots of things I do, but the text editor when I try to resize text, it just ruins it and gets blurry sometimes. Then I found inkscape, which was good for, text and everything else worked fine, but not much of photo editor.
Inkscape is like Adobe illustrator. It’s for vector graphics and text. it’s not great for photos/pictures/pixelated things. Like, you can add those as objects to a document. But you want to edit the images somewhere else. Maybe a krita --> inkscape workflow could work for you?
I also use kdenlive for video editing, and rawtherapee for DSLR photos editing.
If you’re also just kinda exploring software for fun, I recommend trying to play around with blender for more specialized video editing. Like, if you want to add complex effects, or motion track/stabilize, whatever. It’s an extremely powerful piece of software (best to look at tutorials, idk if anyone can figure that shit out on their own). All I’ve done with it is stabilize some video (which I then used in a kdenlive project), and I absolutely haven’t even scratched the surface.
Last time I did Krita ----> inkspace, not much hassle. I know Blender, I didn’t know that it could do video editing.
Pinta is pretty decent for some things, like a paint.net for Linux.
GIMP and Krita are aimed at Photoshop, while RawTherapee and Darktable are aimed at Lightroom, and Inkscape is aimed at Illustrator.
Rawtherapee is really fucking good, I used it on Windows before discovering Linux
But their hands are shaking too much, so they aim, but at the wrong things. I wish any of them could find some UX designers. I forgot about the text editing in Krita, that was horrible indeed.
I made/maintain a UI from scratch for Inkscape, if anyone is interested. It addresses various UI issues
Photo editing: darktable
Digital Art: Krita
Illustrator type stuff: InkscapePain: Gimp. although the PhotoGIMP plugin makes it bearable.
OR wait for the recent wine patch to mature a bit more and then you can literally just use Photoshop.
Well, for image manipulation, I can only think of GIMP as I have been using it for close to 2 decades. But because I have barely scratched the surface of what you can do with it, I don’t know if it would be a suitable replacement for your use-case. Also of note, its UI is definitely not a one-to-one reproduction of Photoshop’s, so it will require some getting used to.
There’s a github project called PhotoGIMP that makes the GIMP UI feel a lot like photoshop, aimed at transitioning users.
Edit: here
Interesting, thanks guy’s!
It’s Photoshop CS2 in your browser
Do people still like https://www.photopea.com/ ?
GIMP, but you definitely should install also the GMIC and resynthesiser plugins. With GMIC especially, you’re getting so many things that not even Photoshop can do, making GIMP objectively superior.
Edit: If you mean you’re looking for a raw editor, meaning you change the colors and how the image themselves look, then you need Darktable. This is a raw editor. GIMP is mainly for VFX.
What do personally use G’MIC for?
The example screenshots all look gimmicky (heh) or super advanced scientific image processing.

I guess noise reduction is useful to the average user. Depends on how good it is.
Two of my favourite ones are median and montage. One I use for mood boards, the other one is to get rid of either noise or people in images.
Have you tried PhotoGIMP? The link is in the sibling comments. I wonder if the difference, my first time hearing of GMIC.
Yeah, I’ve tried photogimp, but it just changes the layout to be more comfortable for Photoshop users, which I’m not. GMIC is a collection of different VFX.
Personally I use GIMP. Been my photoshop replacement for at least a good 5ish years now, and it’s come a long way! It has (imo) a pretty intuitive interface so it doesn’t take too long to acclimate.
From what I know you’ll have to compose with a mix of Krita GIMP and Inkscape because those are the three most reliable and feature rich FOSS image editors at this time. In the current capitalist mode of production, free software will hardly be on the level of paid software, however enshittified, because of how many devs get to work full time on it.
Keep in mind that I say this while operating fully on a FOSS environment, because the relative increase in features and reliability doesn’t justify going from free to an absurdly high subscription
Affinity
Someone just recently managed to get it going.
I have been looking at Affinity as a sub for InDesign. I have never actually tried it though. Does it work on Linux?
I dropped Adobe a few years ago, I do love inscape, however yeh it has limitations, gimp for photos. Not found anything to good with text. Been back and forward with Scribus but it’s just so awkward.
I used Affinity on Mac and Windows. It was the affordable, well-thought-out, performant Photoshop competitor and is now free to use (with a Canva account). Some folks got it running with wine and there is an easy to use appimage ( see articlke )/
I got it running easily, but didn’t test it fully, yet.
Yeh I don’t wanna be faffing with wine…that’s what held me back last time I looked. Didn’t even mind the one off fee for affinity I’d rather pay that and know it’s mine TBH. Curious if can a will eventually make it subscription.
I was fine buying it, too. Now, I bet they will integrate it into their online services in order to have people hooked up.
What are you doing with photoshop? If it’s mostly photo editing, it’s darktable that you’re looking for.
Photo editing, adding text and cutting more. Thanks, I will have a check.










