Well, I've finally bitten the bullet and got rid of Photoshop. I was paying through the nose for it every single month and barely using it. Happy to see the back of it.

Photoshop was useful to me for four main tasks:

  • Raw development. However quite some time ago I switched from the (excellent) Adobe Camera Raw to the (even better) DxO Photostudio.
  • The DxO Nik tools. For these, Photoshop was just a platform to run them in (back in the day they were Photoshop add-ins which needed Photoshop to run). But these days I can run the Nik tools stand-alone, or from inside DxO Photostudio: Photoshop is no longer required.
  • Basic dodge and burn. I can more-or-less achieve the same result using Photostudio and/or Nik, but get there in different ways. I would like to be able to dodge and burn explicitly (as in Photoshop, and many other packages).
  • Basic image joining and layout (like the example below).





So what I need is something that:

  • Does basic dodge and burn (similar to Photoshop, Corel Paintshop Pro, probably 50 other programs)
  • Can lay out 2 or more pictures (like the example above)
  • Can't think of anything else I can't already do with PMView and/or Photostudio + Nik, but there may be the odd other thing.
  • Easy to learn and use, small and efficient.


Free and open source is good, but I'm happy to pay for something better or easier to use. (Last time I looked at The Gimp, it was big and clunky. Possibly it is better now, but why not ask here for advice first?)


Thanks all.