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

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.

GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program: The Free and Open Source Image Editor

2- Darktable

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.

darktable
darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer

3- Rawtherapee

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.

Home

4- Photivo

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.

Photivo - Photivo

5- LightZone

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.

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6- GimPhoto

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.

Gimphoto - Free Photoshop Alternative Download Photo Editor
Gimphoto is free photo editor as Photoshop alternative based on GIMP with new menu layout, great selection of plugins and available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux Ubuntu with professional look and feel for free photo editing.

7- Gimpshop

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

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8- digiKam

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.

digiKam

9- Photoscape

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,

PhotoScape X for Mac and Windows 10
Free Download PhotoScape X - Fun and Easy Photo Editor. PhotoScape X is an all-in-one photo editing software which provides photo-related features such as Photo Viewer, Editor, Cut Out, Batch, Collage, Combine, Create GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture, RAW images and More. Best Photoshop Alternative…

10- Photoflare

Photoflare

Photoflare is a simple, fast, open-source powerful image editor platform.

It is available for windows.

Photoflare – Simple but powerful Cross Platform Image Editor

11- Graphite

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.

Graphite | Redefining state-of-the-art graphics editing.

12- Photoflow

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.

12 Free and Open source Photo Editing Software for macOS, Windows and Linux
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13- Rawstudio

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.

Rawstudio

14- Filmulator

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.

Filmulator
Filmulator, a simple-to-use open-source raw photo editor

15- PhotoDemon

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.

Home
the fast, free, portable photo editor

16- BitMappery

BitMappery

BitMappery is a web-based photo editing tool that comes with layering, masking, customizable brushes, and Dropbox integrations.

BitMappery
A photo editing tool running inside your web browser

17- Hugin

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

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.

PhotoQt Image Viewer

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

Gallery | Your photos on your website

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.

Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.

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!

Best 13 Open-source Photography Workflow solutions and Adobe Lightroom alternatives
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12 Free and Open source Photo Editing Software for macOS, Windows and Linux
Commercial photo editing software is not for everyone, most of them are for professionals, some are not easy to learn and overall they are not cheap. As I started using macOS alongside Linux years ago, I kept using open-source software. Unlike Windows which has many free software alternatives macOS…