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submitted 6 days ago by roserose56@lemmy.zip to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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.

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[-] DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 67 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

GIMP and Krita are aimed at Photoshop, while RawTherapee and Darktable are aimed at Lightroom, and Inkscape is aimed at Illustrator.

[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Krita is aimed at Clip Studio Paint. It's not great for quickly editing something.

[-] iByteABit@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Rawtherapee is really fucking good, I used it on Windows before discovering Linux

[-] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] sixdripb@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I made/maintain a UI-style from scratch for Inkscape, if anyone is interested. It addresses various UI issues

https://gitlab.com/sxwpb/ink-sx-ui

[-] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 days ago

That looks much better, I’m going to try it, thanks for sharing!

[-] sixdripb@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

nice, feel free to give any feedback if you have any problems with it.

[-] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 days ago

Hey, I tried it. Is it only themes in the settings, or should I do something else. The interface became a bit more aesthetically appealing, so a nice work on that regard. But my pain point is the panels and their very weird behaviour (like you do resize and they are too much all the time). I expect you cannot address that with a theme.

I’m going to keep it, so I may comment more some days / weeks later, if you will.

[-] sixdripb@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes, this is “surface level” styling as a theme. It targets Inkscape-specific widgets as much as possible, which improves things considerably. It does not change Inkscape beyond the styling level

If you could explain your panel issue in more detail (I don’t understand what you meant exactly) and if there isn’t already, it would be good to submit it as a issue to Inkscape directly

[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I like the UI of Krita. Gimp is... Uh... Gimp. But Krita is certainly a modern drawing program.

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[-] jcr@jlai.lu 10 points 5 days ago

The first item on your list should have been to try Gimp ?

[-] Joelk111@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'll add that you can't just "try" gimp really, you'll have to learn some new workflows for sure, but yeah, should've been top of the list, it's THE alternative.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

I can recommend PhotoGIMP which makes GIMP UI fairly close to Ps.

[-] BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com 24 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world 26 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

There's a github project called PhotoGIMP that makes the GIMP UI feel a lot like photoshop, aimed at transitioning users.

Edit: here

[-] roserose56@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago

Interesting, thanks guy's!

[-] trk@aussie.zone 19 points 6 days ago

https://www.photopea.com/

It's Photoshop CS2 in your browser

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 5 days ago

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.

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[-] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[-] Quibblekrust 4 points 6 days ago

What do personally use G'MIC for?

https://gmic.eu/

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.

[-] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] wltr@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 days ago

Have you tried PhotoGIMP? The link is in the sibling comments. I wonder if the difference, my first time hearing of GMIC.

[-] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] TruePe4rl@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

As someone already pointed out, try to increase font size first.

I personally use a Vector layer and put text there (not sure if it even works in paint layer). For making it bigger you can then just grab the corner with Select Shapes Tool and resize it. If it doesn't work, enable Scale Styles in the Tool Options docker.

[-] PumpkinEscobar@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Pinta is pretty decent for some things, like a paint.net for Linux.

[-] Pacers31Colts18@piefed.social 3 points 5 days ago

I was just getting ready to ask. I've been a paint.net user for years, gets me by well enough anytime I need it. Switching to Linux, I found GIMP way too annoying for my liking.

Might try this out or figure out how to run Paint.net on Linux.

[-] KotActually@piefed.social 9 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

Krita is what I use but I also find text handling difficult so I always do text last.

[-] SrMono@feddit.org 8 points 6 days ago

Affinity

Someone just recently managed to get it going.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[-] SrMono@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

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.

[-] SrMono@feddit.org 1 points 6 days ago

I was fine buying it, too. Now, I bet they will integrate it into their online services in order to have people hooked up.

[-] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[-] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 4 days ago

People sleep on Blender's "VSE" capabilities so much. I feel like an extension to make it a little bit more turnkey like Kadenlive could be helpful, but it's a VERY good video editor and I think few users really know how much it can do in that realm.

[-] roserose56@lemmy.zip 2 points 5 days ago

Last time I did Krita ----> inkspace, not much hassle. I know Blender, I didn't know that it could do video editing.

[-] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago

What are you doing with photoshop? If it's mostly photo editing, it's darktable that you're looking for.

[-] roserose56@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Photo editing, adding text and cutting more. Thanks, I will have a check.

[-] Navigator@jlai.lu 5 points 6 days ago

Gimp and Darktable should do the trick !

I know you said "alternatives to Photoshop" but if you don't find any, this video shows that you can run Photoshop on Linux now. Try it and see if it works for you

[-] ProperlyProperTea@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

Scrolled down to see if some had mentioned this. I think the 2018 version of Photoshop worked the best iirc. Also Wayland may have issues with Drag and Drop.

[-] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] Lileath@hexbear.net 4 points 6 days ago

Ive never used it so I cant vest for its quality but I have heard Photopea as an alternative for Photoshop in the past. It being webbased shohld also mean that it will work well on linux

[-] roserose56@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

I have used the web version and it was very good I have to say.

[-] eagerbargain3@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

try also https://www.affinity.studio/ by Canva, free and run on linux great

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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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