Miscellaneous Free Editing Software Recommendations/Photoshop Alternatives

[Lolita Trap]

11y/o necro on a 14y/o thread, nice xD

Photoshop has always been the leader in image editing, but I feel like the first step to really help out in Editing was adding the source preview into brushes (which I believe happened in CS3). Before that aligning patterns while closing was quite bothersome - pretty much what it still is on Gimp (unless they changed that recently).
To match the patterns perfectly you needed to make a separate layer for each source so that even if you slightly misaligned them, you could just move the layer about to make the correction.
Sure, CAF is great, but it's not perfect. You need to learn how to use it correctly first and it won't always get you the best results. Especially if we're talking about patterns without much source material around. The best use I've found for it was normal (non-patterned) gradients, e.g. in webtoons. Though, for best results, you'd still need some touch-ups.

Anyway, I think it's been possible to use Topaz Labs with Gimp for some time now, which was the biggest element it lacked (if you're working with magazine raws) compared to PS previously.

Also, I think Krita is starting to become a nice contender. While it didn't yet have the source preview within a brush last time I used it, I heard it's being developed.

That's true, CAF definitely doesn't fix everything but IMO It's the best for newbies. I'm not sure about the updates regarding GIMP since I've barely used it but If it does get updated to get a feature similar to CAF or better, then I think it'll be a real downgrade towards PS. Especially since GIMP is free.

I've also heard of a new free software people used nowadays, it's called Medibang Paint Pro. I've used it for like 2 days, and It's honestly quite confusing. I haven't heard of any Krita updates recently but if they did get updated, then I'll definitely try it out in the future.

I guess what I'm saying is that, there's still a lot of good, free alternatives, but photoshop is superior.