Why I ditched Photoshop for these 5 game-changing tools

Editing software has gotten a little more complicated over the years. You probably used Paint back in the day when you were learning about computers — its simple design and the ability to draw was arguably the only feature anybody fooled around with, and it was cut and dry. Nowadays, there are tons of photo editing software that allows you to manipulate, tweak, finesse, and get your photos just right.

Adobe Photoshop may be the standard-bearer in this list. It is a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud and offers many tools and features for having your photos turn out just how you want them. For example, if you took a photo of your kids but one of them has a giant stain on their shirt, you could upload it to Photoshop and remove it like it wasn’t even there in the first place.

While Photoshop is indeed a great tool and can be extremely useful for many situations, it’s also expensive and over-saturated with features you’ll probably never use. If you buy a subscription for just yourself, it costs $23 per month, which is more than three times the amount of an Apple TV+ subscription. What you need are alternatives to Photoshop that can get the job done for less — some of which are photo editing apps that are just plain better. Here are the best ones.

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Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a photo editing software that is a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. There are different versions of Photoshop that you can use with Photoshop being the main option and best for professionals. It is used by millions each year.

1 Canva

A go-to for creative professionals

Canva is an all-encompassing editing tool that allows users to boost their creativity. Not only can you edit a simple photo, but you can use many of the social media templates to get your post looking exactly how you want, edit videos or music, remove the background of an image and put in another one, and more. Many of the features are incredibly intuitive, and Canva offers a UI that’s easy to grasp for users of all skill levels.

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Canva can now use AI to generate custom graphics to add to your designs, but that’s not the only new feature to get excited about.

The AI features built into Canva are among the very best in the landscape. Canva also offers a free version, albeit with limited access to features, for users to give it a try before they commit. If you want to sign up for a Canva subscription, it’s cheaper than Photoshop at $120 per year for Canva Pro.

Canva can truly create almost any type of art project that you want.

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Canva

Canva is a photo editing app with a ton of features for all kinds of users. It uses AI to generate many of those features.

2 Photopea

Simple, free, no frills, and efficient

If you’re looking for a free version of a photo editor, Photopea is an easy one to pick up and learn. It provides you with plenty of tools in an incredibly basic layout. It’ll remind you of Microsoft Paint in its simplicity, but Photopea is anything but ordinary as it makes it easy to edit photos without costing you a dime.

You can choose from different templates or create your own custom background. Opt for different size ratios to fit your purposes well, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more. You can get a premium account with Photopea at $5 per month, and it provides an ad-free experience, lets you hold up to 5GB of work, and gives you 3,000 AI credits per month.

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If you aren’t interested in the AI credits and can tolerate the ads, you get all the same features in the free version — just with less storage space in the cloud offered by Photopea. All the tools are on the toolbar on the left side, making them easy to access and fun to play around with. While the interface is not as user-friendly as some other options, it’s hard to argue with what Photopea gives you for free.

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Photopea

Photopea is a web-based photo editing software that offers simple features for amateur users. It works with aspect ratios seen for social media posts, making it easier to get the ones that you want right.

3 CyberLink PhotoDirector

Using AI can get you pretty far

Cyberlink

Cyberlink PhotoDirector is for those that want to play with the powers of AI. It offers a full menu of generative AI capabilities, allowing you to run wild with manipulating photos. You can upload a photo and swap out hairstyles, clothes, makeup, and even someone’s entire face. While it does let you edit a photo meticulously to make it completely different, you can also do so with one click of your mouse or finger.

While there are one-click features, the interface is complex and filled with other ways to change photos. You can sharpen a photo in seconds and upscale it to enhance the smallest details. There’s a free download version of CyberLink PhotoDirector that you can try out. If you like it, you’re able to get a subscription for as low as $3 per month. While you can handle photo editing with it, you aren’t able to edit videos — that’s available with CyberLink PowerDirector, a completely different software.

Other CyberLink software includes:

• ActionDirector (video editing)
• Promeo (for stories and reels)
• CyberLink PowerPlayer (for watching videos)
• Vivid AI (AI image generator)

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CyberLink PhotoDirector

CyberLink PhotoDirector uses AI features to edit your photos. You can enhance your photos with one click and it takes no time to touch up photos as you load them into the software.

4 Skylum Luminar Neo

A solid option for pros and amateurs

For an easy-to-use interface that can do simple tasks exceptionally well and advanced ones well enough, Skylum Luminar Neo is a good option for both professional and amateur photo editors. The layout of the interface is expertly designed, making it easy to go from feature to feature.

The features are built around AI, and many of them rely on it entirely. It can adjust the lighting of the entire photo by estimating what it could look like naturally. You can also zap unwanted objects out of the photo and keep the background of the photo looking like it naturally did as you took the picture.

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Where Skylum Luminar Neo excels is handling outdoor photos, particularly when it comes to the sky. It gives you plenty of filters to use but also uses generative AI to make the sky look more natural, even changing it to mask a plane or clouds that you don’t want. While it doesn’t have all the features that Photoshop does, it also doesn’t come at such a large price. It costs a one-time payment of $69 for the year, and you can also do a free trial before you decide to bite the bullet.

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Skylum Luminar Neo

Skylum Luminar Neo is lauded for its interface and the wide range of tools for editing are at your disposal. The multiform presets and batch processing make it great for heavy use.

5 DxO PhotoLab

Thought that photo wasn’t up to par? Think again

DxO

You’ve probably taken dozens of photos that turned out a bit blurry and thought, “I’ll just delete that.” DxO PhotoLab says, “not so fast.” This software comes in handy if you only happened to get one photo of a special moment, and it’s a bit blurry.

The DxO PhotoLab technology, powered by AI tools and machine rendering, can reduce the noise around a photo, meaning it will remove variations of the pixels in the photo to make it clearer and more visually appealing.

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The software can fix your photos and make them clear. What more could you want? Luckily, DxO PhotoLab offers plenty more. The color rendering features are premium and the ColorWheel allows you to get them just right. The ReTouch tool is versatile for editing, so you can retouch, clone, rotate, edit, and more. You can also add and manage keywords for storing purposes and make the metadata work not just for the app but for other apps as well. This one is pricier at $229 per year, but that’s still cheaper than Photoshop.

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DxO PhotoLab

DxO PhotoLab is a premium photo editing service that allows you to do RAW photo editing. Its noise reduction features are some of the best on the market, making it a great choice for professional photographers.