A great free alternative to Photoshop

It is no secret that Adobe products are expensive.

It is also no secret that they pretty much are the only tool in town that does the job well. Very well in fact.

Professionals begrudgingly pay these prices but they get rewards in the kind of output they can achieve and charge accordingly. Fair enough.

But what about us poor sods that just want to remove a pimple from someones face before committing the photo to a frame and displaying for the whole world to see. Or perhaps make aunty Edith look just a tad less wrinkled before we post the photo to Facebook?

Are we to commit to hundreds a month to have Photoshop on hand for the once or twice a month we might want to use it?

No, I hear you splutter at the screen. We can use GIMP for free or Photoshop Elements from the Appstore.

All true of course but I feel, and this is a common complaint, that GIMP’s interface is impenetrable and Photoshop Elements is great but it is still $160.00. Is Aunt Edith’s wrinkles worth that?

Fortunately there is an answer and it is 100% free and is enough like Photoshop to be, if you have ever used Photoshop, instantly recognisable.

It is, of all things, a website: https://www.photopea.com

To demonstrate just how easy this is, I will give you an example.

I have this photo of my brother and unfortunately he is standing behind some barbed wire.

I go to https://www.photopea.com and choose Open from Computer.

I select it from the desktop (of wherever it is stored) and click on Choose.

You will see that the tools on the left hand side are very Photoshopesc indeed.

I choose the Blend tool and set about removing the wire just as I would if I were paying for Photoshop.

Now the results are very much a product of the skill level of the user and as in this case there are no skills the results might wander far from the ideal… but this is definitely not the fault of the website.

Once done I choose File and Export as.

Not bad for a few minutes, zero skills and, more importantly, zero dollars.