I've mentioned a few times before that one of the biggest hurdles for me to switch to Linux is not having access to Adobe Creative Cloud, and specifically things like Photoshop and Lightroom. I've tried some pretty creative solutions, including apps like WinApps and Wine, on top of trying alternatives like GIMP and RawTherapee. Unfortunately, virtualization and real-time translation don't work all that well for something this complex, and as I've mentioned before, free alternatives to Photoshop only remind me why paid options exist.

And then I remembered something. Adobe now provides web-based versions of Photoshop and Lightroom, and those are available on all platforms. It's easy to forget this is an option, but I took it for a spin with my most common workloads, and I have to say, the best Linux alternative to Photoshop may just be Photoshop.

The problem with free apps

The learning curve is steep

I love not paying for things as much as anyone. Trust me, if I can find a free or cheaper alternative to something without it being a nightmare, I will. Unfortunately, though, free alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom are just not pleasant to use. Many things can be said about Adobe's practices, but the user experience is something the company has nailed down to near perfection, and these free apps just don't replicate it.

GIMP has always had a very convoluted interface that just didn't click with me, and while the GIMP 3.0 redesign helped, it's still not as friendly. Finding many of the features I rely on frequently is just too hard or impossible. Photoshop's AI-based object selection is still unmatched (though I've heard GIMP has something similar through a plug-in), and that's a big deal to me.

Likewise, I wasn't a huge fan of Darktable or RawTherapee, either. I mostly use those apps for quick photo adjustments and noise reduction, and the noise settings are just far too convoluted to get consistently good results. During the time I was using those apps, I noticed many of my photos were coming out a bit too soft, but that was the best I could do with these tools. It just doesn't compare to Lightroom.

That's not to say there aren't good alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom; I think Affinity Photo 2 is a serious contender, and it has a much more appealing pricing strategy. But it's still paid and still not on Linux.

Photoshop on the web is actually fantastic

Almost everything I need

My usage of Photoshop is admittedly fairly basic, but it's been surprisingly hard to find the features I need while having them be easy to use. To my surprise, Photoshop on the web not only supports all the features I need, but it actually has a UI that I would almost consider better than the desktop version of Photoshop. It feels less bloated and pretty smooth to use in comparison.

All the main settings you'd expect are here, including color and lighting adjustments, the selection tools, cropping and resizing, effects, and more. Sure, more advanced users may notice a few things missing, but to me, there's a perfectly balanced set of features on offer here.

One of my absolute favorite features in Photoshop is the selection tools, and for multiple reasons. First, automatic AI-based selection, something I can't find in free apps out of the box. When you open the selection tool, it actually shows you a collection of detected objects in the image, so you can automatically select any of them, which is frankly even better than what Photoshop on the desktop offers, since it only selects one object automatically. But another thing I love about Photoshop is how easily you can adjust the selection with the quick selection brush. This still uses color detection to select or deselect objects more accurately, and while the UI is a bit different, it still works perfectly on the web. It made my life so much easier. I can also just as easily create a new layer with my selection, which, again, is something I do a lot in Photoshop.

Other features I use frequently in Photoshop for desktop include resizing an image and resampling it. I use both "nearest neighbor" and "preserve details" resampling very frequently, so it's great that both of these options are available. I can also easily change the canvas size using the crop tool, which is great as well. Finally, another tool I need less frequently but still appreciate are layer styles, as I sometimes use layer strokes to add an outline to parts of my projects. Perhaps most surprising of all, I can even open a new project in a separate tab or window, make a selection, copy that selection, and then paste it into another Photoshop project, just as I do with tabs on the desktop app. Photoshop on the web takes a few seconds to write content to the clipboard, but it works, and that's impressive in its own right.

Outside of the internet requirement, there really isn't much of a downside to the web version of Photoshop, in my opinion. It's legitimately great.

Lightroom is great, too

Though one big feature is missing

Much like Photoshop, finding a good Lightroom alternative has always been difficult for me, and thankfully, there's also a web app for Lightroom here. In fact, unlike Photoshop, Lightroom for desktop (not Lightroom Classic) already kind of feels designed with the web in mind, so it translates pretty seamlessly to the web app.

In Lightroom, I tend to mostly use the automatic color and lighting adjustments, and then mess around with the lighting manually to get it just where I want. The automatic adjustments are rarely perfect, but they do get me a lot closer, so they're a great starting point, and thankfully, that option still exists on the web, along with all the same sliders for shadows, highlights, whites, and blacks, so I can perfect the look of my photos. It's great.

I can also crop and change the aspect ratio of photos, which is equally welcome. I usually capture my photos in 16:9 so I can ensure the framing works in that ratio, but then I upload the 3:2 version to make full use of the sensor size, so it's good to have that option here.

The one thing I need that's missing here is the AI-powered Denoise feature. This capability usually runs on the GPU of your device, so I suspect that's why it's not implemented in the web version, but it would be nice if there was a cloud-powered version of the tool or something. Still, the manual noise reduction in Lightroom for the web is just as easy to use as on the desktop, and much easier than its competitors, so I still appreciate having that option. Other features like lens correction and removing chromatic aberration are also available, covering pretty much all of the needs I typically have in Lightroom. It does seem to be missing additional defringing options, but I don't need those often.

It's not cheap, though

It depends on what you need

I understand ditching Photoshop is about more than it not natively running on Linux, and the cost is a big problem, too. Both Photoshop and Lightroom have free versions on the web, but each one comes with big limitations. Lightroom can't edit RAW files on the web unless you pay for the photography plan, which is a big hurdle right off the bat. You can still play with JPG images, but that typically results in worse image quality.

Photoshop, on the other hand, seems to work okay, but a lot of features are also behind a paywall. For example, automatic object selection requires a paid plan, though you can use the quick selection brush for free, and that can generally work well. Though, even there, the Refine Edges option requires a paid plan, too. Layer styles and effects are also exclusive to the paid plan.

That means you still kind of need to be paying $19.99 per month for Adobe's photography bundle to unlock the full capabilities of these apps (which also gets you 1TB of cloud storage). But there's a potential silver lining here. Exclusive to the recent Photoshop app for iPhone, there's a special Adobe plan for Photoshop mobile and web. This gives you access to most of the features in Photoshop for the web (and on iPhone as well) for a much lower price of $7.99 per month. That's a much better deal, and when you consider how many features you still get this way, it may be the best way to go about it. Hopefully, Adobe makes this plan available more widely soon, because I can much more easily recommend Photoshop on the web this way. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to include Lightroom, but it would be nice to see a potential "photography mobile" bundle for $9.99 at some point, too.

You don't have to ditch Photoshop on Linux

The price may be a deterrent, but if you work across different devices like I do and you already have the photography plan anyway, this just means you don't have to ditch Photoshop or Lightroom if you want to use a Linux PC. I'll keep using the desktop apps on my Mac Mini, but it's great to know that when I need to be on my laptop, I no longer have to feel restricted to Windows. I can pick up my Linux laptop and keep using it for the things I always have without much in the way of trouble.

I was very pleasantly surprised with how capable Photoshop and Lightroom are on the web, and if you've been wondering how you can use a Linux PC with Photoshop, this is it. But that doesn't even have to be the case — if you just need to do some quick work on a PC that's not yours, these web apps can still be very helpful. I recommend checking them out if you haven't.