Photoshop has long been the standard of image editing, but for many of us, the subscription wasn’t worth it anymore, especially with Affinity being free now. However, Affinity is still tied to a major corporation (Canva) that can paywall features whenever they want, it’s still a proprietary app, and there isn’t really an active community. So you might want an open-source alternative regardless.
GIMP is probably the first to come to mind, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s comfortable navigating it, but it’s not beginner-friendly or even very user-friendly. Enter Pixelitor. It’s a free, open-source editing app I stumbled across recently, and it’s very promising. Here’s why I’d recommend it as an open-source alternative to Photoshop over Affinity.
What is Pixeliter?
A comprehensive open-source graphics app
Pixelitor is a free, open-source, cross-platform raster graphics editor written in Java, which makes it lightweight and portable. It can run on any operating system that supports Java without needing to change the code. Unlike Affinity, it’s not an all-in-one professional suite - it focuses on giving you the core tools you need to edit and enhance your images, such as non-destructive editing, layers, color adjustments, filters, and so on. It supports all the common file formats like JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and more.
Pixelitor is aimed at anyone who needs a capable image editor without paying for software or dealing with subscriptions. It’s ideal for hobbyists, students, small business owners, and anyone who regularly works with photos and graphics but doesn't need every advanced feature Photoshop offers. You can perform everything from color correction and resizing to compositing and simple digital painting, making it flexible enough for day-to-day editing tasks.
The community is mainly centered around its GitHub repo, where users can find the code, log issues, and engage in discussions.
It’s fully non-destructive
Make adjustments without permanently altering your graphic
It’s surprisingly hard to come by free and open-source editors that are truly non-destructive. Even GIMP doesn’t have non-destructive editing for all its features, despite the 3.0 upgrades. One of Pixelitor’s strongest technical advantages is that it’s built around non-destructive editing, so I can make as many changes as I want without affecting my original image. You’ll see this throughout the app in how it handles layers, masking, and blend modes.
Pixelitor has smart objects
Just like Photoshop
This isn’t something I expected to find in a free, open-source app. The only other Photoshop alternative I know of that supports smart objects is Photopea. Smart objects take non-destructive editing a step further and let you place layers inside a “container” that preserves their data. When you scale, rotate, transform, or apply filters to a smart object, the app doesn’t permanently modify the original pixels. I can open the object whenever and edit it separately.
This is especially useful for reusable elements and iterative work. For example, I can embed a logo or UI element as a smart object, apply effects to it, and still swap the source image later without rebuilding the layout. Smart objects pair well with Pixelitor’s filters since they remain editable over time.
It has a massive toolkit
You can do advanced editing
Starting off with the selection tools: you’ve got all the same ones as in Photoshop/Affinity, they’re just a tad simpler. There are the ellipse, rectangle, polygonal, and freehand selection tools. This is what I use for things like object isolation and masks, and while they are decent, they don’t have many customization options, like feathering.
I quite like the brush tool in Pixelitor. It’s simple, but incredibly intuitive to use, and perfect for either quick graphics or painting overlays and blending them with my images. The smudge tool is another one I like - I use it to clean up overspills or for creating artistic effects. The gradient tool is probably one of my favorite tools to play with in the app because I appreciate having a quick way to add multiple, blended colors to the canvas.
Pixelitor offers far more than what I’ve mentioned here, including a paint bucket for color fills, custom shapes for design, a pen tool for line work, a text tool, and much more. It also has a dedicated color menu for full color control of your shots, including things like levels, curves, and HSL, so you can use the app for color correction and grading. Moreover, there’s a major filter kit which includes things like distortions, artistic effects, noise, blurring, and more. Pixelitor also has all the basics like rotating, cropping, and flipping.
Pixelitor is worth a look
If you’re looking for a free Photoshop alternative but don’t quite love that Affinity is tied to a major corp and isn’t open-source, then Pixelitor is worth considering. It covers a wide range of editing workflows, including non-destructive features like smart objects, while staying fully open-source. It also has an active development community, which makes its roadmap and limitations far more transparent than most proprietary editors.