20 Top Free and Open-source Solutions for Photographers
In today world, editing photos is a critical component in the overall photography process, and it was taken a new level of importance.
As demand continues to rise and the market is filled with plenty of capable options, we will suggest top 20 apps to enhance your photography workflow.
We take many free high-quality photo editors without having to pay for an expensive program to edit your image like a pro.
Enhance your photography workflow with these apps
Open-Source Software for Photographers
1- GIMP
GIMP is a free and open-source image editor that provides the tools for high-quality image manipulation (retouching, restoring, and more).
It is used by graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, scientists.
It gives artists power and flexibility to get original artwork, it has a graphic design element, it is come with a customizable interface, many filters, digital retouching, hardware support, and supports many file formats.
GIMP is a cross-platform available for Linux, Windows, and macOS, and released under The GNU Image Manipulation Program.
Pat David
2- Darktable
Darktable is an open-source photography platform that enhances photography processing workflow.
It comes with dozens of features include: it is Non-destructive, GPU accelerated image processing, professional color management, support filtering, and sorting, zero-latency, zoomable user interface, tethered shooting, multi-language platform, has a ton of color image operations, effects/artistic image post-processing, and more.
It is a cross-platform run on Linux, macOS, Windows, Solaris, BSD and licensed under the GPL-3.0 license.
3- Rawtherapee
Rawtherapee is a free and open-source raw image processing program designed for the digital camera to deal with raw images.
It is featuring many powerful tools to produce astonishing photos. Their features include high image quality, support outstanding raw,
It is a cross-platform released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.
4- Photivo
Photivo is a free and open-source platform photo processor that handles row files such as bitmap files.
Their feature came to include: Gimp workflow integration, CA correction, Green equilibrating, line denoise, perspective correction, sharpen, cross processing, batch mode, and more.
It was released under GPL3, and you can install it on, windows, Linux, macOS.
5- LightZone
LightZone is an open-source digital darkroom software that includes RAW processing and editing.
It is a non-destructive editor that lets the user build up a stack of tools that give the user ability to rearranged, readjusted, turned off and on, and removed from the stack, and it can be copied to a batch of photos at one time.
You can install it on Windows, macOS, Linux.
6- GimPhoto
GimPhoto is a free image editor, photoshop alternative.
GimPhoto features include: color management, CMYK separation, 16-bit mode, batch process, layer adjustment, Styles, action
It is run on Windows, macOS, Linux distribution (Red Hat, Ubuntu), and released under the GPL.
7- Gimpshop
Gimpshop is an open-source free alternative to photoshop with many professional tools that can professionally get your job.
It is features layers, channels, masks, filters, levels, advanced patterns, professional-grade photo enhancement, complete customization.
It is run on Windows, macOS, Linux and published under GNU General Public License v3
Skillademia
8- digiKam
digiKam is a digital photo management application that is free and open-source
It has many tools that give you the ability to importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files.
The most thing that let me love this platform that it is directly transfer photos and video from a camera to it, and let you organize photos professionally.
digiKam runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It was released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
9- Photoscape
Photoscape is a complete photo editing software.
Photoscape has dozens of features such as photo viewer, has many colors, filter, film effect, light leak, let you create Animated GIF, cut out, batch, collage, combine, create GIF, color picker, screen capture, RAW images, and more
It works on Windows and macOS. It is licensed under the LGPL-2.1 license.
Furthermore, it also has a snap package for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and other major Linux distributions,
10- Photoflare
Photoflare is a simple, fast, open-source powerful image editor platform.
It is available for windows.
Dylan Coakley11- Graphite
Graphite is a powerful 2D vector and raster editing for 2D graphics graphic design, photo-editing, digital painting, illustration, data visualization, compositing, procedural texturing, data-driven visualization, and technical art.
It comes with a powerful node-based approach, user-friendly interface,
It is a free, open-source platform released under the Apache-2.0 License.
12- Photoflow
Photoflow is a complete raw image editing software that aims to provide a fully non-destructive photo retouching program.
It features layer-based photo editing workflow with real-time preview, allows loading and edits images of arbitrary size, Fully color-managed workflow, support for layer grouping and layer masks.
It is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License. It is run on Windows, macOS, and all Linux distributions.
Hamza Mousa
13- Rawstudio
Rawstudio is an open source for RAW images. It is used to read images and manipulate them from the camera.
It helps you to get the benefits of RAW images, fast processing of large image collections, converts Raw files into JPEG, PNG, or TIF images.
The features come to include batch processing, tethered shooting, advanced noise reduction, cropping, straighten, full-screen mode, image tagging, sorting, and more.
It is released under the GPL-2.0 license.
14- Filmulator
Filmulator is a simple RAW image editor. It focused on simplicity, easy learning, streamlined workflow.
It can take RAW files from the camera easily
It is licensed under GNU General Public License, version 3.
15- PhotoDemon
PhotoDemon is a free, open-source image editor for Windows.
Their features include: Portability, Power, Usability, comes with a built-in macro recorder, has a batch processor, is fully themeable, supports real-time previews, custom presets, keyboard navigation, and more.
It is licensed under a BSD license designed for Microsoft Windows.
PhotoDemon: the fast, free, portable photo editor
16- BitMappery
BitMappery is a web-based photo editing tool that comes with layering, masking, customizable brushes, and Dropbox integrations.
17- Hugin
Hugin is an open-source panoramic imaging tool chain building for helping you create a panorama image.
It is easy to use and cross-platform, can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
18- PhotoQt
PhotoQt is an open-source, simple, powerful image viewer that provides a simple interface.
It supports ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick, video files, touchscreen, basic image manipulations, thumbnail cache, command-line options.
It is a cross-platform available for Windows, macOS, Linux and released under the GPL-2.0 License.
19- Gallery
Gallery is an open-source web-based gallery and album organizer that gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management for your personal site
20- Paint.NET
Paint.Net is an open-source image and photo editing software alternative to pricey commercial software.
Its feature simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface, performance, layers, active online community, automatically updated, Special Effects, Powerful Tools, Unlimited History Free.
It is run on Windows and released under the MIT license.
Conclusion
There are much Open-source Photography Workflow solutions. Most of them are rich in features and can be used directly with any project, or even customized to meet the special cases whenever needed.
If you have any other recommendations for this list or comments in general, we’d love to hear them below!
Hamza Mousa
Hamza Mousa
