Alternative to Photoshop?

Hi, I'm very new to this whole development scene. I have been watching tutorials and I have noticed people using Photoshop to create textures and import them to unity. I was curious if there are any free programs that I could use to do the same thing that would have similar functionality. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

I ran into the same problem as you, but found a solution. Although its not as advanced as Photoshop, Gimp is a very good program for creating textures.

 

Paintshop Pro is a poor man's Photoshop. It does cost but is pretty cheap at $49.99 http://www.corel.com/corel/product/...038&segid=8100002&storeKey=us&languageCode=en

 

On MacOS, check out Pixelmator. Otherwise, what these guys said (on Windows)

 

Gimp looks perfect. Thanks guys!

 

There is also a program called Art Rage... heard it is pretty good too...

 

Gimp, Is the best One for desktop application,
Next one if Pixlr, API one, for browser based photoshop

 

Gimp is nice, but lacks of some vital functions like the needed bitdepth. Still just 8 bit per channel. Doesn´t open exr. And it is nearly useless at Windows since version 2.8. When you move the image then the display breaks into a thousand horizontal and vertical lines, and it needs several seconds until it comes back. Not a really nice workflow when you half of the time just wait for the picure to reappear.

Another low budget option is Photoline. It`s a bit odd to use here and there. But has nearly everything needed. http://www.pl32.com/

Mh, there is still CS2 as a dowload available ...

 

There are many alternatives of photoshop like GIMP which is good to use for creating texture but not advanced as photoshop. Photoshop is only the best powerful tool for designing a logo or image editing.

 

Depends on what you want to do with it, really.
If you are in need of some of the Plugins like the NVidia Normalmap Plugins or the xNormal Plugin directly inside your editing functions then there's no way around Photoshop, really.

Otherwise I personally would also recommend Paint Shop Pro. It's the software I started out with when it was still Jasc Paint Shop Pro and in version 4. For a beginner to intermiediate image editing user it has a lot to offer for a very affordable price.

For concepting and painting there's Painter - but that one is also pretty expensive. Not a subscription software though and still about half the price of PS.
Be aware that it's no Photo manipulation software, though. Painter is designed to mimic real life drawing techniques.

GIMP and myPaint are the free alternatives but personally I never liked the Interafce or the look and feel of GIMP much. Better pay the few bucks for Paint Shop Pro, IMO.
myPaint is awesome. I recommend it.

 

really ?

I use xara designer and use it for 2Dtexturing too ....and I can also use the NVidia Normalmap as Plugins ..
Xara look like as vectorprogramm, but it is also a images editing tool and extremely versatilely.

e.g. if you like you can even create your promo website from your game with this program.

 

Okay ... let me reword that ....
If you need the NVidia Plugin, nDo2, dDo or any of the many many other Plugins that are pretty much exclusive to Photoshop or do not want to rely on having several programs to switch between - there's no way around it. At least for now.

Also for Normal Maps alone there's still Crazy Bump - now Knald (in Beta) and the Plugins xNormal provides can also be accessed from within xNormal without Photoshop.
I did not say there is no way around Photoshop ever.
It's just not always as convenient or some functions are missing or behave different.

It was an example. Sheesh. BTW - even GIMP has a normal map plugin for no cost whatsoever.

For starting out and on Windows I'd still recommend Paint Shop Pro.

 

Any halfway serious or even not so serious 2D program supports Photoshop 6 plugins actually
All plugins that exist for Photoshop that aren't from Adobe and normally part of the Adobe application install already are Photoshop 6 plugins as the plugin pipeline thats newer than this is proprietary and not accessable to 3rd party developers.

Thanks to that many applications are actually able to use all these plugins too, be it Pixia, Gimp, Paint.net, ...

 

Okay - that is actually news to me. Mea culpa.

I guess Plugins like nDo and dDo still are rooted too deep in Photoshop to work for any other Program, though. Do they?

 

Acord 5+ is my replacement for Photoshop

http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

 

If i do not have access to Adobe Photoshop i use Paint.net (i don't like the interface in gimp but that is personal taste).

 

surprised it hasn't been mentioned already...

https://krita.org - free like gimp but less rubbish

I think gimp will get better once they make progress on the roadmap https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap 3.2 layer fx ..everything tied to GEGL

even the gui is less retarded and less bloated.. oh and it has the all important layer style functionality that many photoshop users come to like for graphic design related touches.

 

Affinity Photo is a full featured professional Photoshop replacement (some call it the 'photoshop killer'). Works with PSD format, mac and windows... a ONE TIME purchase for $50 bucks.

 

It is the closest you can get compared to Photoshop. I use this for more than a year now and I love it.
The thing that makes gimp and Krita completely useless for me, is the destructive image editing. In Photoshop and affinity photo you can use layers that change for example the color and you can adapt the effect whenever you want, because the original image is always kept.
On the other side (as mentioned before) there are tools only available in combination with Photoshop. So it really depends on what you want to do

 

vidi, you just blew my mind with that nvidia normal maps plugin. I also thought that was Photoshop only. Thanks for the info!

 

I use:

- Krita (its free)
- PaintShopPro (its cheap realtive to photoshop)

 

+1 for Affinity, have been using it for over 12 months professionally and it is very capable.

 

I'm updating my recommendation from krita (slow development, useless at adding common photoshop shortcuts (its still better than gimp ofc)) to https://www.photopea.com/ ... it's basically photoshop in a browser with much better image saving support (because those useless ducks at Adobe can't even bothered to improve common image format saving optimizations like for png pathetic Adobe) also just small things like drag and dropping layers onto the below icons which krita doesn't support.

I seriously recommend trying it out.. even the scripting support, on the best layer styles, where you can get the css generated for styles applied to text.. seriously good stuff