I don’t know any image editor that can compete 100% with Photoshop’s features, but also with its price. I mean Photoshop is extremely expensive and when you think that a regular person might use 10-20% from it’s total power, then the cost is totally unjustified. In some parts of the world (sadly) the salary for 1 year might be not enough to buy Photoshop.

Luckily there are alternatives. And very powerful ones. If you are dealing with images and photos at amateur level, you can skip Photoshop and choose a free alternative. To help you,  I selected 5 products that I used sometimes and which made me very happy.

1. Acorn

It has a free version which is amazing. I really love this piece of software. Beside the fact that it’s free, Acorn’s interface looks very similar with Photoshop. More than this it support a lot of feature that you can find in Adobe’s product:

- Layers
- Text
- Drawing
- Filters
- Vector Shapes
- Selections
- Web export

2. Pixelmator

Another excellent image editor software. Not only that the menus are build to look like Photoshop’s one, but also the screen display is similar, just for your pleasure. For sure you’ll appreciate this if you are used with Adobe’s product.

It includes:

- Layers
- Transform tools
- Painting
- Selection tools
- Retouching and correction tools

3. Pixen

Another free image editor that you can use instead of Photoshop. It’s designed from top to bottom for pixel artists—people who make low-resolution raster art like the sprites you see in old video games. But it’s great for artists of all arenas: Pixen is like a very powerful MSPaint or a simpler, more agile Photoshop.

It includes:

- Layers
- Animation through Drag’n'Drop
- Patterns and overlays
- Alignment  crosshairs
- Powerful palette tools

4. Pixel

Only one letter makes the difference between this image editor and the previous one. The letter and the fact that Pixel is a multiplatform software, meaning that beside Mac OS X, it also support Windows and Linux. Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching, graphics manipulating and animation.

From its features:

- Channels and Layers support
- HDR support
- Retouching tools
- Realtime live effects for Layers
- Complex support for image slicing and optimization

5. Pinta

Pinta is a drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET (available for Windows platforms) It’s goal is to provide a simplified alternative to GIMP for casual users. A very promising piece of software that is currently under heavy development. It’s very easy to use and if you used Paint.Net, then you’ll be very satisfied with this product. Pinta has one disadvantage from the other 4 products. You need to download and install Mono for Mac, then you can install the Mac bundle.

Features:

- Drawing tools
- Multiple Layers
- Adjustments tools
- Effects