Best Photoshop Alternatives in 2023 - Free and Paid

“Photoshop makes things look beautiful just as you have special effects in movies. It’s just a part of life.”

- Erin Heatherton.


Graphic designing, photo editing, and digital arts are the best MODERN skills to engage the audience with alluring artistic content.

Without any speck of doubt, these skills are quite high in demand in the market and offer enticing employment opportunities.

Whether you’re a beginner, an experienced, or someone passionate about graphic design, to try your hands in this field, you must be aware of the best drawing software to create breathtaking digital art.

In this article, we have come up with the best photoshop alternatives for 2022, which are free, paid, and user-friendly.

4 Free Graphic Design Software That Can replace Photoshop

Let’s start by looking at the four free graphic design software mentioned below.

- Canva

One of the most renowned and easy-to-use graphic design software, Canva, is used to create various graphics such as banners, logos, posters, presentations, social media graphics, and visual content.

The software visualises many templates that can be edited as per your needs to create custom visual graphics without professional graphic training. The free version allows you to create, crop, and edit graphics.

- GIMP

Another free design software is GIMP, one of the most popular alternative software to photoshop due to its open-source nature and an extensive community.

It is not a beginner-friendly software as it offers the same level of advanced features as Photoshop. Further, it is a highly versatile graphic editor that supports multiple file formats and allows you to edit images in various formats.

- Figma

A fast and lightweight Photoshop alternative, Figma is built for easy collaboration within design teams.

Whether you’re a hobbyist, want to team up with friends, or work in a professional environment, it is the best free graphic design software.

It's design-specific features allow you to build interactions between graphics and animate transitions. In addition, the auto layout feature also helps you quickly rearrange your graphics and save a lot of time while working.

- Polarr

Are you just venturing into the graphic design world? Polarr is going to be the best drawing software for you.

The best thing about using this tool is that you get insights into complete edit histories for each photo you work on, infinite undo/redo, advanced RGB/HSL, and digital art programs, making it a great Photoshop alternative for you.

Further, this free design software comes with online tutorials, community support, and an auto enhancement feature, which helps you create a beautiful graphic design in a single click.

4 Paid Best Drawing Software To Be Used Instead Of Photoshop

If you’re an experienced graphic designer or want to excel in this field, you must take a step further to try your hands on the mentioned below ‘Paid’ Photoshop alternatives.

- Affinity Photo

One of the most popular Photoshop alternatives, Affinity Photo, is known to be the best editor for creating HDR images.

In fact, this graphic design software is built keeping professionals and photographers in mind. The top features of the tool include RAW file editing, autosave, undo/redo of up to 8,000 steps, unlimited layers over 1,000,000% zoom, etc.

Further, it’s lighter in weight than Photoshop and comes with a modern-quad core technology to run at 60fps for smooth editing.

- Procreate

It is known for being the best drawing software as it is mainly designed for sketching, illustrating, and prototyping artwork. Further, it has endless features, tools, and brushes.

Additionally, it is a highly customisable tool, down to gesture control and brush settings. You will also get various high-quality brushes with wet and dry applications to create perfect artwork.

- Luminar

The world’s first AI-powered image editor, Luminar, is the best drawing software alternative to Photoshop.

It has AI features and many filters to quickly create professional-looking photos. Further, by using AI to analyse photos, Luminar can also suggest you the best template to use within your photos to create a masterpiece of your artwork.

- Fotor

Next Photoshop alternative tool you have on the list is Fotor. It is a powerful, user-friendly photo editor drawing software.

You can use this tool on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS mobile applications. This software comes with multi-language support, social media integration, NFT creator, and AI integrations.

The tool has about 1 million stock photos, 100,000 templates, and hundreds of fonts to help you create great graphics.

Are you ready to start your journey in the graphic design field? Now the ball is in your court; get yourself the best Photoshop alternatives to work on your skills.

Further, if you want to buy a graphic design tablet, count on XP-Pen. We have more than 15 years of experience and have been dedicated to the research, design, production, and marketing of digital drawing tablets. Connect with us today.