
Snapheal Is an Inexpensive Alternative to Photoshop - jpadilla_
http://mashable.com/2012/11/02/snapheal-review/
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jopt
I love seeing smaller companies take on Adobe, but branding this as a
replacement for Photoshop is a mistake.

Photoshop is such a large and complex beast that nothing small and focused
could ever replace it. That's Photoshop's true strength. It manages to be the
industry standard across a whole slew of slightly different industries.

Nobody uses the whole thing. Few people use even half of Photoshop's features.
Competing against it on a specific feature may be possible, and that's
precisely what this app does.

But even matching what Photoshop does for one segment of users won't be
enough. To beat Photoshop, you have o be 10x better at that one feature---
otherwise users will stick with the industry standard.

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danielpal
I bought SnapHeal a few weeks back, but is nothing like an inexpensive
photoshop alternative. Photoshop is extremely powerful, snapheal feels
extremely underpowered. In fact I used snapheal in a few photos, with such
terrible results that I deleted the app. My experience certainly didn't match
the results that the app screenshots showed, even after spending hours trying
to do so.

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algolicious
Has anyone tried Gimp for OS X? <http://www.gimp.org/downloads/>

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Osmium
It recently got a big update, and now happily runs without X11. So it's better
than it's ever been. If you've used Gimp on other platforms, I'd recommend it,
but if you're just starting out I'd recommend something else.

Better (though paid) alternatives for OS X are Acorn and Pixelmator.
Pixelmator is a more traditional Photoshop-like UI, while Acorn (in my
opinion) is nicer, with a one-panel design that gets out of your way, while
still having a host of powerful tools and scripting support (with a choice of
languages: AppleScript, Python or JavaScript/JSTalk).

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devindotcom
I can't stand pixelmator. And the last few releases have done nothing to
improve it. Thanks for reminding me about the big Gimp release - I can't wait
to switch it in!

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benologist
"Mashable does not condone altering images to sensationalize news stories."

Which is why in opposite world they don't start every article with a giant
picture they found somewhere on Flickr that is usually barely related, like
this one.

"If you already own and are comfortable using Photoshop, you have no use for
Snapheal, which is in no way a replacement for professional editing software."

An odd way to end an article that claims it is exactly that.

It's hard to take Mashable seriously.

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mnicole
Pixelmator is going to be your best bet for a Photoshop alternative on a Mac.
It's far faster, more beautiful and all-around pleasant to use, not to mention
the original was built by just two brothers and I like supporting smaller
teams that actually use their products (something I wonder if a lot of
Photoshop developers do given the issues that are consistently not addressed
with each release).

It imports PSDs, but last I tried, it had trouble with layer styles.

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BitMastro
Gimp and Paint.NET are inexpensive alternatives to Photoshop.

This one looks like a tool to easily do a very limited set of tasks.

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JoeAltmaier
They each have their limitations. For instance, I can't use Gimp for importing
my existing Gb of layered psd files - it flattens them into a bitmap. Gimp's
support of other file formats seems to be limited to importing them without
any of the metadata.

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BitMastro
I think every alternative is going to have its limitations, especially when
dealing with alien file formats, but I think they are closer to an inexpensive
alternative then the original submission.

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JoeAltmaier
But Gimps whole point is to wean you from another tool. So 'alien file
formats' should be a priority, I would think. Anyway that's what I expected
when I tried it, so its failure to support pretty much anything was
surprising.

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BitMastro
Slightly unrelated
[https://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/XeePhotoshopLoad...](https://code.google.com/p/xee/source/browse/XeePhotoshopLoader.m#102)

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debacle
Paint.NET is the only relatively feature-complete tool I've used that is
remotely on par with Photoshop. I actually prefer it to Photoshop in some ways
because the UI is more intuitive.

The GIMP is good, but it's less stable than I would like in my experience.

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devindotcom
Paint.NET is one of my favorite free tools of all time - up there with VLC and
a few others in the top tier. Absolutely amazing app.

