Notes for people choosing a free Photoshop alternative.
A source-led blog about the free editors in this guide: what they must cover next to Adobe Photoshop, how to test them with your own files, and when paying remains the right answer.
PhotoCraft vs Photoshop: what free must cover
An honest, source-led comparison: license models, editing surface, file compatibility, ecosystem gravity and who each tool actually fits.
switch guideDoes a free editor fit your files?
A practical assessment checklist: inventory your formats and features, test five real files, and run two weeks in parallel before you decide.
task guideTesting PSD compatibility
How to test a layered PSD across the free editors in this guide — and when a free editor is the wrong answer for the job.
How this blog is written
Every article starts from public sources: the PhotoCraft maintainer repository, the official GIMP site, Krita, Photopea and darktable, and the official Adobe Photoshop product page where Photoshop is discussed. We describe licensing models, file formats and workflows in words rather than inventing prices, benchmarks or rankings, and we claim no hands-on lab testing.
Product status changes. The primary sources are always the authority; each article records the date its sources were last checked.
Start here instead
other entrancesNew to the question? Read the full guide, which holds the task chooser, the comparison table and the file-evaluation checklist. Curious how the picks are made? The editorial method page explains the award rubric, the evidence register and what this edition has not tested. This blog is the long-form layer on top: one topic per article, no feature-count contests.