I’m pretty much in the same situation you’re in. I use Clip Studio Paint and a 24-year Photoshop user, and finding a suitable alternative to both is a crapshoot. I’m gonna try GIMP and Krita again, but I’m not optimistic…
Affinity is much more usable than the gimp. I hear good things about it with crossover (commercial wine). If you’re willing to spend a bit of money (not an exorbitant amount).
No ability to save a workspace or have it be cohesive across projects. Searched online to see if there was a fix for it and there’s not, you just have to set up your desired workspace for every single new project you start. Controls are not intuitive, i.e. right click does not bring up brush size menu. Can’t select parts of the drawing and just flip horizontal/vertical, you have to put it on a new layer and do a bunch of extra stuff to flip it. Also tried to import my PS brushes into Affinity and a lot of them had broken or mangled textures or just, did not operate the same and no amount of finagling could restore them to how they were.
I really wanted to like it but it’s still got some kinks that need to be worked out.
When GIMP’s version 3 came out, it got a lot of great reviews. I can’t tell you what’s different or better, but in using it myself since then, it doesn’t “feel” as daunting. Very subjective, but definitely try it out again; it might work for you this time around.
Going from Photoshop to GIMP 3, it’s just not the same. I have a lot of respect for the project, but there are so many rough edges that it’s demoralizing at best.
Here’s an example: in Photoshop, I select an object with the smart select brush (not available in GIMP), copy and paste it and it ends up on a new layer. I can drag the new layer around and draw on it. In GIMP, I paste a rectangle and the layer bounds are exactly locked to the paste area, so if I do something like feather the edges or try to draw on it I get a block of pixels. Without looking it up, can you tell me how to make the active layer size match the canvas size? And if I drag that layer, will it move the pixels or will it offset that layer and force me to rerun the “layer to document size” process?
Not that Adobe hasn’t done a ton of Enshittification, but CS6 was pretty great for me.
I’m pretty much in the same situation you’re in. I use Clip Studio Paint and a 24-year Photoshop user, and finding a suitable alternative to both is a crapshoot. I’m gonna try GIMP and Krita again, but I’m not optimistic…
GIMP has always been kinda ass tbh. I used it back then to make gifs and that was the only thing in that program that wasn’t a pain to do.
Affinity is much more usable than the gimp. I hear good things about it with crossover (commercial wine). If you’re willing to spend a bit of money (not an exorbitant amount).
I’ve tried Affinity, it’s got a few dealbreakers.
No ability to save a workspace or have it be cohesive across projects. Searched online to see if there was a fix for it and there’s not, you just have to set up your desired workspace for every single new project you start. Controls are not intuitive, i.e. right click does not bring up brush size menu. Can’t select parts of the drawing and just flip horizontal/vertical, you have to put it on a new layer and do a bunch of extra stuff to flip it. Also tried to import my PS brushes into Affinity and a lot of them had broken or mangled textures or just, did not operate the same and no amount of finagling could restore them to how they were.
I really wanted to like it but it’s still got some kinks that need to be worked out.
When GIMP’s version 3 came out, it got a lot of great reviews. I can’t tell you what’s different or better, but in using it myself since then, it doesn’t “feel” as daunting. Very subjective, but definitely try it out again; it might work for you this time around.
Going from Photoshop to GIMP 3, it’s just not the same. I have a lot of respect for the project, but there are so many rough edges that it’s demoralizing at best.
Here’s an example: in Photoshop, I select an object with the smart select brush (not available in GIMP), copy and paste it and it ends up on a new layer. I can drag the new layer around and draw on it. In GIMP, I paste a rectangle and the layer bounds are exactly locked to the paste area, so if I do something like feather the edges or try to draw on it I get a block of pixels. Without looking it up, can you tell me how to make the active layer size match the canvas size? And if I drag that layer, will it move the pixels or will it offset that layer and force me to rerun the “layer to document size” process?
Not that Adobe hasn’t done a ton of Enshittification, but CS6 was pretty great for me.