Adobe Express

Software

Best AI art generators in 2024

By admin December 19, 2023

The top AI art generators in 2024

Every AI art generator you should consider using.

Best AI art generators in 2024, In just over a year, text-to-image AI art generators have gone from closed betas to being literally everywhere. What started with DALL·E 2 has grown into a huge cultural movement. AI-powered art generators that have been around for years are having a surge in popularity, and new apps with interesting takes are launching every week. It feels like pretty much everyone is generating amazing, hilarious, and downright weird images, just by typing in a prompt.

If you want to get in on the text-to-image action but aren’t sure where to start, this list will help you out. It’s a broader list than my picks for the best AI image generators in order to show off all the different angles that folks are taking with AI art generators.

Still, this isn’t an exhaustive list of every app that can make AI art. Instead, it shows off the text-to-image AI art generators that worked when I tested them, are accessible through a web app, and seem not to be scams.

The category is changing so fast that by the time you read this, there might be even more great apps available. But for now, it’s a pretty good overview of the biggest AI art apps available at the moment.

The top AI art generators

.	.	.
DALL·E 2	Prodia	StarryAI
Bing Image Creator	Leap AI	Fotor
DALL·E 3 (ChatGPT)	Craiyon	Vance AI Art Generator
DreamStudio	getimg.ai	Runway
Midjourney	Shutterstock	WOMBO Dream
Canva	Generative AI by Getty	Picsart
NightCafe	Deep Dream Generator	CF Spark Art
OpenArt	Artbreeder	Pixray
Adobe Firefly	Stablecog	Let’s Enhance
Jasper Art	DeepAI	.

How does AI art work?

The first time you enter a prompt into an AI art generator and it actually creates something that perfectly matches what you want, it feels like magic. But it turns out AI art generators don’t work using magic. They use computers, machine learning, powerful graphics cards, and a whole lot of data to do their thing.

Let’s break it down.

AI art generators take a text prompt and, as best they can, turn it into a matching image. Since your prompt can be anything, the first thing all these apps have to do is attempt to understand what you’re asking. To do this, the AI algorithms are trained on hundreds of thousands, millions, or even billions of image-text pairs. This allows them to learn the difference between dogs and cats, Vermeers and Picassos, and everything else. Different art generators have different levels of understanding of complex text, depending on the size of their training database, and some models are trained for specific purposes or only using licensed content, which affects the kinds of things they can generate.

The next step for the AI is to actually render the resulting image. There are two leading kinds of models:

• Diffusion models, like Stable Diffusion, DALL·E 2, Midjourney, and CLIP-Guided Diffusion, which work by starting with a random field of noise, and then editing it in a series of steps to match its understanding of the prompt.

• Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), like VQGAN-CLIP, BigGAN, and StyleGAN, which have been around for a few years longer.

Both kinds of models can produce great, realistic results, though diffusion models are generally better at producing weird or wild images.

Prompt: A parrot detective wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe.

While some apps are very open about which models they use, others obscure it. VQGAN-CLIP and Stable Diffusion, for example, are both open source, so there are a large number of apps that use them openly—and lots of others that don’t say anything. There are also other apps that use their own data to custom-train various open source models to give better results.

This means that many AI art generators are essentially just different user interface skins for the same art-generating algorithms. From a business point of view, this is somewhat understandable. Still, it’s annoying when you’re trying to choose which app to use (or write about them). Where possible, I’ve listed what models each app uses. When it isn’t declared, I’ve speculated, based on my experience with all these different generative AIs.

How to use AI image generation at work

Interested in AI, but not quite sure how you’d use it at work? Here are a few of the ways people are turning to AI image generation in their roles:

• Generating hero images for blog posts

• Creating social media posts

• Generating slide decks and storyboards

• Creating personalized images for customers

Learn more about how to use AI image generation at work.

29 AI art generators you can use right now

DALL·E 2

I made this with DALL·E 2 using the prompt “an impressionist oil painting of a Canadian man riding a moose through a forest of maple trees”

AI art models: DALL·E 2

Platform: Web

Pricing: $15 for 115 credits (1 credit = 1 prompt with 4 options)

DALL·E 2 is the AI art generator that kicked off this whole craze. While it no longer has a free trial, it’s still one of the most impressive apps out there. It’s simple to use and can produce great results. That’s why its API is used by so many of the other apps on this list.

That API also allows you to use DALL·E as part of your business workflows, by connecting it to thousands of other apps using Zapier. For example, you can create images based on Slack messages and send them back to Slack (or do the same in Discord) or create images for new Airtable records.

Bing Image Creator

AI art models: DALL·E 3

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free

Bing Image Creator is a result of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI. It uses the latest DALL·E model, DALL·E 3, and it’s free (at least for now). The default styles are a little different, so it’s well worth a look, even if you’ve used DALL·E in the past.

DALL·E 3 (ChatGPT)

AI art models: DALL·E 3

Platform: Web (via ChatGPT)

Pricing: $20/month as part of ChatGPT Plus

DALL·E 3 is a serious upgrade over DALL·E 2, at least if you have a ChatGPT Plus account. Not only are the results significantly better, but controlling and instructing it through ChatGPT gives you a lot of control.

Instead of entering one prompt and having to accept the results you get, you can ask ChatGPT to make changes, add bits in, or otherwise mix things up. It makes it much simpler to get great images, even if ChatGPT doesn’t always perfectly understand your requests.

And when you connect ChatGPT to Zapier, you can add automation to your AI workflows. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or get started with one of these templates.

Best AI art generators in 2024

DreamStudio (Stable Diffusion)

AI art models: Stable Diffusion

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 25 credits; $10 for 1,000 credits (enough for ~1,200 images with the default settings)

DreamStudio is the official Stable Diffusion web app. It’s pretty powerful, so you can set how many steps the AI takes, what random seed it uses, and loads of other customizations. It’s also got a free trial, which is nice.

(You can also check out Stable Diffusion through ClipDrop, which is free but watermarks your images.)

Midjourney

AI art models: Midjourney

Platform: Discord

Pricing: From $10 for 3.3 hours of GPU time per month (enough for ~200 prompts with 4 image options)

While Midjourney has one of the weirdest user interfaces—you access it through the chat app Discord—it reliably produces some of the best-looking, most realistic results. It’s my personal favorite AI art generator. Read the showdown with DALL·E: Midjourney vs. DALL·E.

Canva

AI art models: Stable Diffusion

Platform: Web, iOS, Android

Pricing: Free; from $12.99/month for Pro with more AI features

Canva recently added a text-to-image art generator. It integrates perfectly with the rest of the template-based design app, so you can add AI-generated art to anything from social media posts to birthday cards.

NightCafe

AI art models: Stable Diffusion, DALL·E 2, CLIP-Guided Diffusion, VQGAN-CLIP

Platform: Web

Pricing: From $6/month for 100 credits (enough for ~1,240 images per month)

NightCafe adds extra features like styles to DALL·E 2 and Stable Diffusion, as well as allowing you to use older generative art models. More importantly, NightCafe is a community for AI art enthusiasts that includes challenges, a Discord server, and a gallery.

OpenArt

AI art models: Stable Diffusion, DALL·E 2, and other open source models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 50 trial credits; from $10/month for 5,000 credits

Like NightCafe, OpenArt adds extra features to Stable Diffusion and DALL·E 2, as well as letting you use additional open source models and have more control over the specifics of the images you generate. OpenArt also has additional options like sketch-to-image and stock art transformer (which modifies stock images to better suit your needs).

It’s nice to use and its free credit allotment is generous, so it’s well worth a look.

Adobe Firefly

AI art models: Firefly

Platform: Web, Adobe Express, Adobe Photoshop, and other Adobe tools

Pricing: Free for 25 credits per month; from $5/month for 100 credits per month (and included with various Adobe subscriptions)

Adobe has been an AI company for over a decade, and it shows with its custom AI art generator called Firefly. While you can use it online, it’s now being integrated directly into Adobe products like Express and Photoshop.

Perhaps Firefly’s best feature is that you can use it to create custom text effects using a written prompt. AI art generators often struggle with text, and Firefly is really the only one that can do this right now.

Jasper Art

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but appears to be based on Stable Diffusion

Platform: Web

Pricing: From $39/month for unlimited images

Jasper is better known for being one of the best AI writing generators, but it also has a decent art generator as well. It’s more expensive than a lot of the other apps on this list, but if you already use Jasper, it’s worth a look.

Other AI writing tools, like Writesonic and Rytr, also offer AI-generated art, but Jasper’s is different in that it’s more of a standalone tool.

Prodia

AI art models: Stable Diffusion and other open source models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for unlimited images one at a time; from $4.99 for faster images two at a time

Another Stable Diffusion-based art generator, Prodia stands out by letting you try all its models without having to sign up for an account. Prodia also connects with Zapier, so you can automatically create an image on Prodia based on triggers in your other apps.

Leap AI

AI art models: Stable Diffusion and other open source models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 100 images and 1 model; then from $9/month for 250 images and 1 model

Leap AI is a great option if you want to train your own AI art models. While a lot of its features are aimed at developers, it’s easy enough to use that anyone can train their own AI. Plus, Leap AI integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like generate images based on new Discord messages or Google Sheets rows.

Craiyon

AI art models: Based on original DALL·E model (Not DALL·E 2)

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free; from $6/month for faster images and no watermark

Craiyon (previously DALL·E Mini) is based on the original DALL·E model. It’s significantly more basic than the latest art generators, but it’s free and fun to play around with.

getimg.ai

AI art models: Stable Diffusion and other open source models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 100 images per month; from $12/month for the Basic plan, with 3,000 images/month and the ability to train your own models

getting.ai is an AI art generator app with 20 open source models, including Stable Diffusion and models built from it, like OpenJourney. The biggest feature, though, is that with a paid plan, you can train your own models.

Shutterstock AI Image Generator

AI art models: DALL·E 2

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free to generate images; from $19/image to download

Stock image company Shutterstock obviously recognizes the existential threat that generative AI poses to its business—so instead of fighting, it’s partnered with OpenAI. The Shutterstock AI Image Generator is powered by DALL·E 2, and while it’s free to generate images, downloading them uses Shutterstock credits. If you have a Shutterstock plan, you should give it a try. Otherwise, it’s a very expensive way to use an AI art generator.

Generative AI by Getty Images

AI art models: Custom model developed with NVIDIA

Platform: Web

Pricing: Custom

Like Shutterstock, Getty Images has developed an AI art generator. Generative AI by Getty Images is trained on Getty’s collection of stock images. This makes it good for generating weirdly specific stock photos, but not as competent or creative at other things.

Best of all, though, Getty claims that its model is free from intellectual property issues, so you’re indemnified against any legal claims resulting from using the images you make with its tool. If your company has a legal department, it might be that AI art generator you need.

Deep Dream Generator

AI art models: Custom-trained models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 20 images with default settings; from $19/month for the Advanced plan, which allows for hundreds of images per month

Deep Dream Generator is one of the oldest AI art generators online. It was originally designed to use Google’s DeepDream algorithm but has added text-to-image algorithms that appear to be based on Stable Diffusion.

Artbreeder

AI art models: BigGAN and StyleGAN

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 3 credits per month and most features; from $8.99/month for 100 credits per month, which allow you to use more powerful features more often

Artbreeder (formerly Ganbreeder) launched in 2018 as a platform for experimenting with generative AIs. It’s still loose, experimental, and super art-focused. Its three main tools—Mixer, Collager, and Splicer—allow you to combine aspects of multiple images to create something unique.

Stablecog

AI art models: Stable Diffusion and other open source models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 100 images; from $10/month for the Starter plan with 1,750 images per month

Stablecog is another AI art generator based on Stable Diffusion and other similar models. It’s got a nice, easy-to-use web app and, perhaps best of all, a nice, easy-to-understand pricing structure.

DeepAI

AI art models: Custom models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free; from $5/month for 500 images

DeepAI is mostly an AI API for developers, but it has a free text-to-image art generator on its website to showcase what it does. You can also sign up for a paid plan, which gives you access to more styles and allows you to use the API.

StarryAI

AI art models: VQGAN-CLIP and CLIP-Guided Diffusion

Platform: Web, iOS, Android

Pricing: Free for 5 credits/day; from $11.99/month for 50 credits/month

StarryAI is another art generator that uses the older VQGAN-CLIP and CLIP-Guided Diffusion models. It’s free for five prompts and twenty images per day, so it’s one of the best free ways to try out generative models. There are also mobile apps, which is nice.

Fotor

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but probably based on Stable Diffusion

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 3 images; from $20 for 200 credits

Fotor is a popular online image editing app, and it’s recently added a text-to-image art generator that integrates with its editor.

Vance AI Art Generator

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but probably based on Stable Diffusion

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 3 images/month; from $5 for 100 credits

Vance AI offers a collection of AI tools, and it’s recently added a text-to-image art generator. It’s relatively limited, but its tools all use the same credit system. So, if you also want an image enhancer, upscaler, and background remover, it’s worth checking out.

Runway

AI art models: Appears to be Stable Diffusion, but you can train your own

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free trial; from $15/editor/month for the Standard plan, with 625 credits per month

Runway is a suite of art-generating tools for businesses. In addition to features like multiple seats and shared assets, you can train your own custom models.

WOMBO Dream

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but probably VQGAN-CLIP-based

Platform: Web, iOS, Android, Discord

Pricing: Free; from $9.99/month for premium features like making multiple outputs from one prompt

Dream by WOMBO is a freemium art generator with a large number of styles. Although it doesn’t say explicitly, it likely uses the older VQGAN-CLIP-based models to generate its images.

Picsart

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but probably Stable Diffusion-based

Platform: Web, iOS

Pricing: Free; from $13/month for no watermarks and premium features.

Picsart is another online image editing app. The AI art generator integrates with the rest of the editor, so you can combine AI-generated elements with text, stickers, and other images. Although it’s free to use, you have to pay to download images without a watermark.

CF Spark Art

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but probably VQGAN-CLIP-based

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free; from $9/month for faster generating and private downloads

Creative Fabrica is a digital assets marketplace that’s recently added an art generator. It’s free to use, but its best feature is that you’re able to browse hundreds of other AI creations.

Pixray

AI art models: VQGAN-CLIP-based models

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free

Pixray is an open source art generator that uses VQGAN-CLIP-based models. While there’s an API and Python implementation, there’s also a free demo on the website. The best thing is that you can play around with all the hidden settings that go into an AI art generator if you want to learn more and see how they work.

Let’s Enhance

AI art models: Doesn’t say, but appears to be Stable Diffusion-based

Platform: Web

Pricing: Free for 10 credits/month and watermarked images; from $12/month for 100 credits/month

Let’s Enhance is an AI-powered image upscaling app that recently added an art generator. It’s still in beta, so generating images doesn’t cost anything (though saving them costs one credit).

Other categories of AI art generators

This list is focused on text-to-image art generators, but there are entire other categories of AI art makers out there. Some examples:

• Lensa’s Magic Avatars and MyHeritage’s AI Time Machine both take a series of selfies and return AI-generated portraits.

• Many text-generating apps, like Writesonic and Rytr, also include AI art generators, so you can create images to go along with your copy.

• I was only looking at web apps in this list, but there are mobile-only art generators like ArtOut, if you just want something on your smartphone.

• And then there are others, like Palette, that can colorize photos.

And these are just the AI art generators that are available now. Other companies are certainly testing their own art generators, and you could always train your own using one of the apps I mentioned that allows for that.

Which AI art generator should you use?

With so many AI art generators to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. So let me break it down:

• Midjourney is my favorite, though the free trial is temporarily paused, and using it through Discord is weird.

• DALL·E 2 is great, but it’s cheaper to access it through Bing Image Creator.

• Stable Diffusion is used in lots of different apps. The simplest way to access it is through its own app, DreamStudio.

• Firefly’s text effects are awesome, as is its integration with other Adobe tools.

• NightCafe and OpenArt are the best apps if you want to play around with different models, including some of the older GAN models.

• Deep Dream Generator is a great way to see how far art generators have come.

• Artbreeder is perhaps the weirdest art generator among a very weird series of art generators—and totally worth a look.

Otherwise, just scroll through the list and try whichever ones strike your fancy. You can’t go too far wrong.

Keep Reading

Application

The 9 best free photo editors in 2024

By admin December 19, 2023

The 9 best free photo editors in 2024, Tired of everything being a subscription? Need to edit a photo or make a social media graphic right now?

I get it—the cost and the impatience. Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for a reason, but there are plenty of free Photoshop alternatives out there. As a certified Creative Person, I’ve used Photoshop for over 20 years in both my corporate marketing and freelance careers and for personal projects ranging from web graphics to sarcastic t-shirt designs.

From that experience, and based on hours and hours of sifting through and testing dozens of options, I can confirm these are the best free AI photo editing apps.

The 9 best free Photoshop alternatives

• Adobe Express for easy AI features

• Canva for maintaining brand consistency across remote teams

• Pixlr E and X for an authentic Photoshop experience

• Photopea for using custom Photoshop brushes

• Sumopaint for the full Adobe apps experience on a budget

• LunaPic for powerful one-click editing tools

• PhotoRoom for product photos and eCommerce

• Krita for artists and illustrators

• Inkscape for graphic design

What makes the best free photo editor?

How we evaluate and test apps

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the blog.

Based on my experience, here’s what the best free photo editing software offers:

• AI tools and advanced features. All apps let you adjust brightness, contrast, and crop or add a filter. To be truly in Photoshop’s class, an app needs graphic design features and the latest AI advancements to speed up your workflow.

• Ease of use. The basic layout and design of Photoshop haven’t changed much in 30 years. Why? It’s intuitive, and it works. The best free photo editor will make it equally as easy.

• Non-destructive editing. An “undo” button is great, but the true gold standard is layers.

• The ability to add text and design elements. Beyond photo edits, today’s tools also need to include graphics, trending fonts, and templates to make creating social media content easier and faster.

• 100% free. We’re trying to not pay for Photoshop here, right? There are several high-end, paid Photoshop alternatives out there, but this roundup will focus on free options, so you can edit like a pro on a student budget.

This year, I tested 40 apps before choosing the nine best to feature here. When evaluating each of them, I tested everything I usually use Photoshop for, including color-grading, toning, cropping, retouching, masking, blending modes, creating social media graphics, and adding text. I also tested the unique special effects or features of each app.

Find the best free Photoshop alternative for your needs below, based on over 35 hours of hands-on research.

The 9 best free photo editors in 2024

Best free Photoshop alternative for easy AI features

Adobe Express (Web, iOS, Android)

Adobe Express pros:

• Easy-to-use AI tools to speed up content creation

• All-in-one editor for graphics, photos, videos, animation, documents, and more

Adobe Express cons:

• Other apps offer more useful video-specific editing features

• Access to AI tools is limited in free version

If you’re already an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, you have access to Photoshop, so why would you use Adobe Express? Because you can take the power of Photoshop anywhere with Express’s web or mobile apps.

Plus, Adobe recently updated Express with a ton of useful AI-powered features like generative AI to create images from text prompts, one-click text effects, and smart object removal and replacement. While testing, I found Express’s AI tools to be among the best and easiest to use—a difficult combo to achieve.

Especially useful for generative AI are the dropdown options, so you don’t have to phrase your prompt just right to get the result you want, like with Midjourney and other competitors. Even so, Express translates prompts quite well. For example, writing “isolate on white background” reliably gives you a clean cutline around an object, and bam, you’ve got a transparent PNG you can use anywhere you need it.

Express has a lot to offer for those familiar with Photoshop, too. It’s got the most popular blending modes from Photoshop, with real layer-y layers, and lets you complete common tasks way easier, like removing an object or background in one click. You don’t have to painstakingly select anything—it just works.

Express has also expanded its video editing capabilities with animation options. Even I, a total animation noob, found it easy to select a layer and apply animation effects with just a few clicks in the side menu. Set it to loop, export it as a GIF, and you’ve got a great asset for social media posts or to use within longer video content.

It’s not surprising that the makers of the real Photoshop have created such a convincing Photoshop alternative.

Express enables both power users and graphics newbies alike to create everything they need in one place, including editing GIFs, videos, and PDFs. And let’s address the elephant in the room: Express’s impressive lineup of free customizable templates makes it a notable Canva alternative. For those with premium access, you also get Adobe Stock photos, Adobe Fonts, and a built-in social media post scheduler.

Because Adobe Express uses Creative Cloud libraries and storage, you can use the Creative Cloud Zapier integration to connect Express to thousands of other apps. There are tons of possibilities, like sending automatic notifications via Slack or emails to your team when you export a new Adobe Express design.

Adobe Express pricing: Free; the Premium plan is $9.99/month (automatically included for existing Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers)

Best free photo editor for maintaining brand consistency across remote teams

Canva (Web, iOS, Android, Mac, Windows)

Canva pros:

• Most cohesive, useful, and easy-to-use AI photo editing tools in one place

• Best-in-class generative AI video and social media video tools for beginners

Canva cons:

• Most advanced features are for premium subscribers only

• File organization could be improved

Canva is targeted more to beginner or amateur designers, but it still does a good job of including the majority of photo edits a pro would make. Canva has always been a popular “all-rounder” photo and graphic editing app, but it’s really stepped up the game even more by launching the AI-powered Magic Studio in September 2023.

Magic Studio is, in my opinion, the best-in-class suite of AI photo editing tools available right now. It’s more advanced than Adobe Express’s (though Adobe is no slouch), and allows you to make professional-quality video, graphics, animation, presentations, documents, and more. Beyond editing, Magic Studio also includes generative AI features like text-to-image prompts and even text-to-video. Yep, write what you want to see and Canva gives you a completely AI-generated video—no camera required. When used correctly, this is a game-changer for social media content.

Magic Grab is a unique tool that works similarly to iPadOS 17’s new update, where you can tap and hold an element in a photo (person, object, etc.) and drag it out as its own transparent PNG to use in another app. This works inside Canva to cut out people or objects to use between Canva projects or easily isolate elements to export and use in other apps.

Canva has also added generative AI copywriting into the mix here with a ChatGPT-style content generator. I may side-eye it as a writer, but I can’t deny it’s a useful feature for creators and small businesses on a budget, and makes the subscription price of Canva highly competitive in cost vs. value.

Canva also includes a one-page website builder and templates to create simple landing pages, an extensive pre-made templates library offering what I think are the best-looking social media, document, and other templates, and illustrations and stock photos too. Whew.

In terms of actual editing, layers are easy to use: you can click and drag elements around independently, or behind or in front of each other. Still, Canva’s true strength is teamwork. Creating a team allows others to use assets you’ve uploaded to Canva, leave feedback, and edit designs collaboratively. The Premium plan contains the “Brand Kit” function, where you can store logos and have brand color swatches and custom fonts readily available.

But you can still achieve brand consistency on the free plan: Just keep your logo files and an image with your brand colors (including hex codes) in Uploads or a shared Google Drive/Dropbox/etc. folder imported to Canva. Your entire team will always be using the correct logo, colors, and fonts across all marketing materials, no matter where they are in the world. It’s a perfect solution for small businesses and entrepreneurs starting to build a marketing team or hiring external contributors to help with graphics.

Canva pricing: Free; the Premium plan is $14.99/month for one user or $29.99/month for up to 5 team members

Best free Photoshop alternative for an authentic Photoshop experience

Pixlr E and X (Windows, Web)

Pixlr pros:

• Text-to-image generative AI interface is great for beginners

• Most authentic Photoshop user experience

Pixlr cons:

• Features confusingly divided between two apps: Pixlr X and Pixlr E

Pixlr reproduces an authentic Photoshop layout and interface, all in a tidy, web-based app (or grab the Windows app for desktop). Or, rather, two apps: Pixlr X and Pixlr E, which is kind of confusing at first. I think they could easily combine them into one app, but it seems like Pixlr E is meant to be the “more complex photo editor” and Pixlr X the “beginner-friendly” option.

Pixlr E looks like Photoshop. You’ve got all the familiar tools along the left side and menu options up top. The Layers panel will also look familiar to Photoshop users. Layers work exceptionally well in Pixlr, including all the same blending modes and opacity settings as PS—even Soft Light.

Pixlr X is where things get a little spicier with their latest generative AI update: you can now create artwork with text-to-image prompts. It’s great for those new to AI prompting, as you can use the easy button menu on the right to refine the style, size, and more of your generated image. On the free plan, you get five images per day.

Pixlr X also contains simpler editing workflows for things like object removal or animation. This edit of my dog (who fell asleep with his tongue hanging out) took me less than 30 seconds in Pixlr X with the heal brush and clone stamp tools—and zero technical knowledge.

It’s easy to switch between Pixlr X and E as they both save projects in a combined library, so you can pop a photo into Pixlr X for a quick retouch, then switch back to Pixlr E for more advanced editing again. (Be advised: It saves into your temporary cache folder only, so cleaning your browser cache will delete them. For anything you want to keep, download it as their PXZ format, and save to your hard drive.)

Pixlr E and X pricing: Both are free to use; the premium plan, which includes both apps, is $7.99/month for 1 person, or $12.99/month for teams of 5 or more

Best free Photoshop alternative for using custom brushes

Photopea (Web)

Photopea pros:

• 100% free

• Familiar Photoshop user experience and tools

Photopea cons:

• Doesn’t have some of the AI features of other apps, like auto object removal

“Wait, how did these ads get into my Photoshop?” is what you’ll find yourself saying, only to realize you’re in a web browser.

Photopea has a dang accurate Photoshop-inspired layout, with the functions to back it up: it can open PSD files, edit RAW files, and export anything you make to PSD. And something completely unique compared to all the other apps on this list: you can import ABR files to use custom brushes.

My personal favorite? You can right-click for additional option menus. Right-clicking in a web app—what is this sorcery? Plus, check out that Layer Style window: it’s nearly identical to Photoshop.

The attention to detail in Photopea is impressive. It doesn’t feel like a web app at all, and that’s the point. While you won’t find one-click filters or AI-powered features here, Photopea is the most functional Photoshop alternative on the web today. Upgrading to a premium account gets you more online file storage and ad removal, but honestly, you don’t need to. It’s refreshing to find an app that includes all its editing features in the free plan.

Photopea pricing: Free; the premium plan is $8/month

Best Photoshop alternative for the full Adobe apps experience on a budget

Sumopaint (Web, Mac, Windows)

Sumopaint pros:

• Free, although the entire Sumo app suite is only $4/month

• Text-to-image AI prompting

Sumopaint cons:

• No masking capabilities for photo editing

If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to the Adobe suite, check out the Sumo family of apps. Sumopaint is their free Photoshop alternative, which does a great job of having all the photo editing tools you need and a simple interface.

It’s actually a great Illustrator alternative, too. You can use a mouse to click and draw, and it works on mobile devices. I tested it with my iPad and Apple Pencil, and drawing felt as easy and responsive as working in Procreate. While you may not want to digitally paint the next Van Gogh in your browser, Sumopaint is perfect for creating quick digital illustrations or drawing on top of your photos, like for YouTube thumbnails.

Sumo has added a bunch of AI tools to all its apps, which in Sumopaint includes image quality upscaling and a surprisingly good AI text-to-image generator. You get three for free with more included in the premium plan. Overall, the prompt process is a little clunkier than Adobe Express’s or Canva’s, but it yields really good results, especially when using the “negative prompts” field to write in what you don’t want the image to have. The slider for “prompt strength” is a bit mysterious without any help text to guide you, so you have to play around with each option to fine-tune your image.

Sumopaint contains everything you need to edit a photo, including adjustment sliders for exposure, color, and everything else, plus the ability to add graphic elements on separate layers and combine all that with AI-generated images.

Sumopaint is free to use, although the $4/month premium subscription to all Sumo apps is an unbeatable value for everything you need to edit your creative work, including videos, music, podcasts, and even 3D modeling.

Sumopaint pricing: Free; the entire Sumo suite of apps is $4/month

Best free photo editing app for powerful, one-click editing tools

LunaPic (Web)

LunaPic pros:

• The easiest way to accomplish advanced edits for beginners, like object removal, background blur, and more

• 100% free and web-based

LunaPic cons:

• Doesn’t save your work if you accidentally close your browser

If you can look past LunaPic’s 1990s interface, you’ll find all the tools you need here and a ton of extras, including one-click background blur, animation effects, resolution upscaling, and easy object removal.

Be sure to read the text above your image as you edit. I found it easy to overlook it, but it actually links to a lot of important features, like the cropping and background removal tools, and it’s where you’ll click “undo” when needed.

A really unique feature is the Animation menu. These are well-done effects that are perfect to turn a photo into a GIF or short video (AVI, MP4, or MPG format) to use in TikToks or Reels. Best of all, they’re all automatic. Just one click, and LunaPic animates it. So easy.

Since we know the algorithms favor videos over photos right now, these effects can really boost your social marketing efforts. Personal favorites include “Snowfall” and “In Focus.” Another favorite feature: focus adjustment. You can sharpen slightly out-of-focus photos without getting that over-sharpened look with “Adjust Focus” and give any photo an iPhone portrait-mode makeover with “Auto Blur Background.” LunaPic does a great job of isolating your subject, but I suggest keeping the background blur under about 50% to keep the effect looking as natural as possible.

Subject masking and object removal work surprisingly well. Go to Edit > Smart Object Removal, loosely brush over the thing you want to remove, and click Remove at the top. This took me only a few seconds for results that would take me ages (and a lot more clicks) in Photoshop with the clone stamp tool.

At first, LunaPic’s UI made me cringe, but the longer I spent using it, the more it grew on me. It’s the perfect mix of advanced tools and one-click simplicity.

LunaPic pricing: Free

Best free photo editing app for product photos and eCommerce

PhotoRoom (iOS, Android, Web)

PhotoRoom pros:

• Batch mode saves a ton of time creating product photos

• High quality background removal and swaps to create professional-looking product scenes

PhotoRoom cons:

• Free version doesn’t include many background swap options

If you sell products online, you need PhotoRoom. While you can edit exposure, color, and more with PhotoRoom, its most powerful features are aimed at eCommerce sellers, including automatic background removal, background swaps, a full range of t-shirt and other mockups, and platform-specific size templates for Etsy, Poshmark, eBay, and other popular marketplaces.

Oddly, simple things like being able to resize an image, are premium features, although you could simply export your finished photo and resize or crop it for free in another app, or natively with your phone’s Photos app.

PhotoRoom has tons of social media-ready templates for retailers to promote Black Friday sales, new collections, or upcoming launches. My favorite feature is the instant background swap. When you upload a product photo, PhotoRoom automatically scans it and accurately removes your existing background in less than a second—and you can swap in any of their flatlay or scene backgrounds. The end result doesn’t automatically scream “fake background” and is high enough quality to use as product photos on your website and across social media.

But the key feature that makes PhotoRoom a must-have for sellers is Batch Mode. Yep, upload a bunch of product photos at once, and PhotoRoom will isolate them, swap out the background, and export them ready to use. Mega time savings.

For even more time savings, connect PhotoRoom with Zapier to automatically remove the background of every photo you put into a specific folder or record.

Remove backgrounds and update new images in Google Drive with PhotoRoom

Try it

•

• +2

•

Google Drive, Filter by Zapier, PhotoRoom

Google Drive + Filter by Zapier + PhotoRoom

More details

Remove backgrounds with PhotoRoom from new Airtable records and update them

Try it

•

Airtable, PhotoRoom

Airtable + PhotoRoom

More details

These automations work with any cloud storage provider that integrates with Zapier, including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and more.

PhotoRoom pricing: Free for up to 250 exports; $14.99/month for unlimited exports and additional features.

Best free photo editing app for artists and illustrators

Krita (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Krita pros:

• Advanced brush library for artists

• 100% free and open source

Krita cons:

• Clunkier process for photo editing adjustments than other photo-specific apps

The interface of Krita is similar to Photoshop, although I found the brush selection and customization panel much easier to use. This really struck me when I went back to using Photoshop after testing Krita for a bit. By default, brushes are nested right underneath the layers panel (though you can customize windows any way you like), and you can choose from many predefined brush styles, from sketching pencils to watercolor brushes and more.

In both Krita and Photoshop, you can customize each brush and add your own custom brushes or import downloaded ones, but this out-of-the-box brush panel is so well thought out, I can’t imagine needing to change them. Of course, many digital painters and illustrators would most likely want to customize these more than me.

When combined with a connected desktop drawing tablet, Krita is a powerful drawing app that can handle professional workflows. It also does a great job with photo editing, though adjusting things like exposure and colors isn’t as straightforward as photo-specific apps like Lightroom. However, Krita’s built-in noise reduction effect is better at cleaning up high ISO or background noise than some paid app options (I recommend keeping it under 25% for the most natural look).

Krita also has many advanced capabilities, like enabling you to code your own automated tasks in Python and animation features, and it can open and save PSD format files, so you can work in Photoshop at work and Krita at home.

Overall, Krita’s feature set makes it better for artists than photographers, but it can still take care of any graphics or photo editing task. The best part? It’s completely free and open source.

Krita pricing: Free

Best free photo editing app for graphic design

Inkscape (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Inkscape pros:

• Advanced path, stroke, drawing, and typography tools

• Automated pattern creation

• 100% free and open source

Inkscape cons:

• A bit intimidating to learn for newbies and non-designers

At first glance, Inkscape is quite different from Photoshop. It definitely has a stronger focus on graphics vs. photos, containing lots of tools for geometric pattern design, shape creation, and alignment.

While I’m not a pro designer, I did find Inkscape’s pen tool easier to use than Photoshop’s version. At first, I thought I must be sooo good at selecting all the points around my dog above to isolate him from the background. The lines seemed to follow his curves perfectly, and once I completed the path, Inkscape automatically selected him with perfect separation from the background. Turns out Inkscape is smart enough to see the little details I missed when creating the path around him, like little furs sticking out and the shape of his ears, to create a proper subject mask even from my quick and sloppy pen path. It made me feel like a pro.

With my subject mask created, Inkscape allows for finely detailed edits like exposure and color control on just my dog while leaving the background untouched, or the reverse—both pro photo editing features I deem necessary in any editing app.

Graphic designers will find even more to love about Inkscape, with advanced path, stroke, vector illustration, calligraphy, and typography tools to achieve any art or design project you can think of—absolutely free.

Inkscape pricing: Free

Which free Photoshop alternative should you use?

The right free Photoshop alternative for you depends on what you need most. Do you need generative AI to create graphics and photorealistic scenes out of thin air? Do you need pro-level noise control and coloring tools for your photography? Do you need done-for-you templates you can easily customize for social media or your website?

Since these are all free, you can try out the ones that seem like they might be a good fit for you until you find the shoe that fits.

There are so many more free Photoshop alternatives out there that didn’t make this list. A few I tested and recommend for specific types of users include:

• Hotpot for free AI image generation

• Capture One Express for Fujifilm photographers looking for the best Fuji RAW format editor

• Lensa for free AI-powered portrait art for social media

Or, if you’re willing to pay for your photo editing software, take a look at this list of the best AI photo editors.

Keep Reading

How to set up Windows 11 Hyper-V virtual machines

Best dash cams 2024

Best free antivirus 2024