Published 05.10.2009
Replacing Photoshop
A fair share of us web designers use Photoshop. I use it, you probably do too. Why? It weighs and costs more than an OS and has no focus; it's loaded with features rarely used by web designers. We web designers hate Photoshop, daily. But we love Photoshop.
We love Photoshop for all of its powerful features. Not content aware scale-powerful, but the features that gives us a great workflow. We haven't seen this great set of features anywhere else, but have we searched hard enough for a replacement? It's easy sticking with whatever you know best, not looking for better solutions. I want to find a better solution, I'm tired of Photoshop and Adobe.
As a web designer, short, clean and functional code is close to my heart - web designers love 'pure'. Photoshop and Adobe are not 'pure', just take a look inside your Applications folder after installing an Adobe app. Or how its GUI fails to adhere to OS X standards. Or picture Photoshop's code base when you're getting the spinning beach ball of death as you want to save your files.
Sorry Adobe, I want to leave you
I want a better and purer solution. I'm even willing to drop some of the features I've gotten used to in Photoshop. I want an application with focus, that knows its target audience, with a clear native interface on top. As lightweight as possible, still giving me a better workflow than Adobe, and some price points away from the cost of a used car.
Let's look at the possible replacements:
Essential Features
What I need to keep my current workflow.
-
Layer groups
To organize elements inside a document -
Layer styles
For easily adding shadows and lightning -
Guides
To structure grids in a layout -
Text & Typography
To tweak typographical settings -
Shapes
To make objects and manipulate them
| . |  Photoshop |
 Acorn |
 Draw It |
 Pixelmator |
 Gimp |
 Inkscape |
| . | 6/6 | 1/6 | 1/6 | 1/6 | 1/6 | 1/6 |
| Platform | OS X & Win | OS X | OS X | OS X | NIX | NIX |
| Layer Groups | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Layer Styles | Yes | No | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Guides | Yes | Partial | No | No | Yes | |
| Shapes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GUI |  Press to zoom |
 Press to zoom |
 Press to zoom |
 Press to zoom |
 Press to zoom |
 Press to zoom |
Let's take a closer look at the apps
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel