Summary

• Photoshop's AI features are impressive and powerful.
• Photoshop offers superior selection tools.
• Photoshop excels due to CMYK support and its interface.

Creative image editors have long been attempting to find alternatives to using Photoshop for everything. Photoshop is expensive and locked behind annual subscriptions that tie you down, but the power and development of Photoshop still give reasons that it’s often the best tool to use. There are great alternatives to Photoshopwhether you pay or use open-source creative alternatives, but even when GIMP makes the top spot in most lists, Photoshop still has plenty of features GIMP can’t replace.

5 Powerful AI features

Generative AI and intelligent tools

There’s an obvious divide between creative users who like, use, and see benefits in AI tools compared to those who put simply, do not. I’m typically on the side that I prefer not to use most AI features in creative software; however, the AI tools found in Photoshop are often an exception to my self-imposed rule.

Adobe’s Firefly AI model creates high-quality, fast, and generally accurate image results in Photoshop. While it’s not perfect — no generative AI seems to be, thankfully — it produces decent results far more often than bad ones.

Not only is the generative feature in Photoshop good, but it also has a bunch of tools that use AI and neural networks to cut down huge chunks of previously time-consuming Photoshop workflow. Now, that’s the sort of AI I can get behind. These features are seen in selection tools, distraction removal, and neural filters, to name a few.

GIMP has no built-in AI features, as is the case for many open-source tools. Some external GIMP plugins allow integration of Stable Diffusion or Dall-E AI models, but these take a workaround to add to your GIMP project rather than being natively included.

4 Adjustment layers

For non-destructive editing

One of Photoshop’s long-standing helpful features is adjustment layers. You can add adjustment layers for many different features, and they benefit from applying edits to your images in separate layers, making them non-destructive for easy removal or further editing later on.

Adjustment layers can be added as color balance, hue and saturation, grayscale or black and white, threshold, and many other photo effects. They’re each applied as individual layers, with the edited adjustment applied to your selected layer without actually editing it.

While many of these features are available in GIMP, they’re unfortunately not applied as separate layers. The effects are applied directly to your image, making it incredibly difficult if you need to change your mind later to remove or edit the effects.

The further benefit of Photoshop’s adjustment layers is that you can apply multiple of them to the same image. This isn’t possible in the same way in GIMP, as all effects would be applied directly to the same base layer.

3 Native CMYK support

Design in the correct color space

You should work in RGB color profiles when creating designs or editing images used entirely for screens. For most pre-existing digital images, they’re already in a native RGB profile, and you won’t have to do anything when editing them in Photoshop or GIMP.

If you plan to print your images or designs, they’ll almost always need to be created in CMYK. If you can’t create the design in CMYK from the beginning, you should use software that converts RGB to CMYK — although this often results in disappointing color differences.

Photoshop has native CMYK color profiles, as well as RGB and Grayscale profiles, with many options for different systems and uses. GIMP only offers limited RGB and Grayscale profiles — there’s no native CMYK support. You can only convert from RGB to CMYK using a third-party plugin. This might only be a minor issue if you exclusively design or edit for screen-based services.

2 Wide range of selection tools

Selection with options

Selection tools might be something you could easily overlook as being important. Still, with Photoshop’s wide range of selection options, it’s sometimes easy to forget that they don’t exist in the same way in programs like GIMP.

Not only does Photoshop have AI-based selection options that allow smart, fast, and accurate selections of complex features at the click of a button, but there are also a ton more selection choices in general.

GIMP offers simple selection tools: rectangle and ellipse shape selection tools, a free select tool, scissors select, foreground select, fuzzy select, and select by color. While these might sound fancy, they’re basic compared to Photoshop’s offerings.

Photoshop offers a multitude of shape-based selection options; polygonal, magnetic, and freehand selections, magic wand, selection brush, and AI selection tools. Although some of these are similar to GIMP’s, the success of the selection process is much greater in Photoshop in comparison. Within Photoshop’s selection tools, you can also save the selections and use them for a multitude of things within your creative workflow.

1 User-friendly interface

UX/UI that leads the way

The interface of creative software needs to be helpful, inviting, and accessible to all. Photoshop’s interface does that to the point that many competitors use a remarkably similar interface layout in their opposing software.

Photoshop’s interface and menus are clearly labeled, reliable in expectations, and fit neatly in the space provided. You can also customize your Photoshop workspace to reflect your workflow and needs, but the default workspace typically works well for most. Panels and pop-ups can be discreetly tucked away, easily accessible from obvious icons that don’t keep you guessing or waiting for the hovering tooltip to learn what tools lay hidden away.

GIMP’s interface is outdated, a little messy, and doesn’t use obvious icons. I’ve spent multiple seconds waiting with my cursor hovering over icons to see the name of it because the icon wasn’t obvious enough or recognizable for its purpose. This adds unneeded extra time to your workflow or results in endlessly clicking around hunting for simple tools.

• Adobe Photoshop

  See at Adobe

• GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

  See at GIMP

GIMP’s good, but it’ll never be Photoshop

Although GIMP is often listed as one of the best alternatives to Photoshop, especially if you’re looking for a free alternative, or you’re focused on using open-source tools — it can't quite measure up to Adobe’s leading creative tool. Using CIMP instead of Photoshop takes more patience and perseverance to learn the tool, download plugins for more features, and dealing with less power in development. Photoshop still leads at the top of the creative software industries, no matter how good the open-source alternatives can be.