FREE - Editing and Design Software

GIMP

‘GNU Image Manipulation Program’, or as it is widely known as – GIMP is the best free alternative to Adobe Photoshop you’ll ever stumble across.

With a widely supported community and with its cross compatibility over a range of operating systems, GIMP clearly stands out as the best free alternative to Photoshop.

Supported Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, Unix, SkyOS
Key Features: Layers, Selection editing, HDR, Re-touching, Noise removal, Lens and Colour correction, Sharpening, Plugin support, etc.
Supported File Formats: RAW formats, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PSD, etc.

Price: Free

Paint.NET

If you have ever used the default Windows Paint, you’ll be much familiar with Paint.NET. This tool was originally developed to be a more advanced version of Windows Paint, and it does inherit many features from the nifty default Windows program. The tool is less powerful than GIMP or Photoshop, but it takes well care of all the basic features you would ever require in an image editing tool.

You can also extend the functionality of this tool by installing the plugins developed by the vast community supporting this platform. If you want a less-cluttered and more ‘humanly’ photo editing interface, Paint.NET would just be the right fit for your needs.

Supported Platforms: Windows 7 or Later
Key Features: Selection editing, Layers, Histogram, Retouching, Resizing, Noise removal, Sharpening, Colour correction, Plugin support.
Supported File Formats: RAW files, BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG.

Price: Free

INKSCAPE

Whether you are an illustrator, designer, web designer or just someone who needs to create some vector imagery, Inkscape is for you!

Flexible drawing tools
Broad file format compatibility
Powerful text tool
Bezier and spiro curves

Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. It offers a rich set of features and is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, logos, typography, diagramming and flowcharting.

Price: Free

KRITA

Krita is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. Originally created for Linux, the software also runs on Windows, macOS, Haiku, Android, and ChromeOS, and features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management support, an advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support, and switchable customisation profiles.

Price: Free

Your private, free office suite

LibreOffice is a private, free and open source office suite – the successor project to OpenOffice.
It's compatible with Microsoft Office/365 files (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx) and is backed by a non-profit organisation.

Price: Free

Free alternative for Office productivity tools:

Apache OpenOffice - formerly known as OpenOffice.org - is an open-source office productivity software suite containing word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula editor, and database management applications.

OpenOffice is available in many languages, works on all common computers, stores data in ODF - the international open standard format - and is able to read and write files in other formats, included the format used by the most common office suite packages. OpenOffice is also able to export files in PDF format. OpenOffice has supported extensions, in a similar manner to Mozilla Firefox, making easy to add new functionality to an existing OpenOffice installation.

Price: Free