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Graphics Editor For Mac

Earlier this week we took at look at some great free web based alternatives to Photoshop. Since we don’t always have web access (this can be especially true during our favorite photo editing time: while riding on a plane), we decided it was a good idea to look at some free photo editing options available for download.

In this list we’ve broken our software down just like we had with our web based list. Basic applications will perform basic photo editing tasks like cropping and resizing, while the More Robust applications will be more akin to Photoshop with options such as working with layers. Applications built for the Mac will have an “M” at the end, Windows a “W,” Unix a “U.”

An easy way to compile and install GIMP and other great Free software on your Mac is by using Macports. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages.

  • iPhoto: Since iLife comes free on every Mac, it makes our cut for a decent free basic photo editor. Of course iPhoto also boasts great photo organization in addition to the simple editing. M
  • PhotoFiltre: This simple editor is like a pared down Photoshop and would have made our More Robust category had it included layer support. W
  • Picasa: Think of this software as Google’s answer to iPhoto mashed with flickr. M, W
  • PhotoPlus: Yet another basic photo editor, bonus for the lay users, this one comes with a tooth whitener tool. W
  • Photoscape: This basic photo editor allows for RAW conversions to JPEG and has a tool for creating animated GIFs. W
Graphics Editor For Mac

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  • Gimp: Easily the most popular free robust Photoshop replacement, and it is easy to see why. With an amazing array of editing tools and thriving developer community, Gimp is a fantastic choice for a real Photoshop replacement and is the one we most frequently use here at Unplggd. M, U, W
  • LiveQuartz: This easy to use editor has a surprising amount of tools including layer management and multi-touch support. M
  • Seashore: Another open source editor, Seashore, features gradients, textures, and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes.
  • Paint.Net: Originally intended as a free replacement to Microsoft Paint software, Paint.Net has grown over the years into a much more powerful tool that includes layer support and several editing tools. W
  • Pixen: This open source editor is designed specifically for pixel artists and features elegant layer support and great animation tools. M

Best Free Graphics Editor For Mac

Did we miss your favorite free photo editing application?

(Lead Image: flickr member William Brawley editing photos, licensed for use under Creative Commons)

We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.

Current Stable Version

The current stable release of GIMP is 2.10.12 (2019-06-12).

We think your OS is Well, we don't actually know. Either JavaScript is disabled, or I am not working quite right... So I am showing you all the options.

Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All

GIMP for Unix-like systems

If available, the official package from your Unix-like distribution is the recommended method of installing GIMP!

The flatpak build is new and has known limitations, though it will likely provide faster updates, following GIMP releases closely.
Therefore choose your installation medium according to your needs.

Flatpak build available in: i386, x86-64, ARM and AArch64.

Flatpak additional instructions

The flatpak link above should open your software installer and prompt you to install GIMP. Yet it may not work out-of-the-box on some platforms since the flatpak technology is new. If that is the case, ensure flatpak is installed and if clicking the link still does not prompt to install GIMP, then manually install by command line:

flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref

Once installed, it will be made available exactly the same way as other applications (menus, desktop overview, or any specific application launch process used by your desktop).
If this is not the case, we suggest to report a bug to your desktop or distribution asking for proper support of flatpak. In the meantime, you can still run it by command line (not as the recommended method, only a workaround):

flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//stable

This installation will also provide regular update. You don't have to come back on this page and install again (it will not work!) when a new version of GIMP is released. Instead if your distribution and/or desktop has a good support for flatpak, it should propose to perform updates.
Once again, if your distribution does not have proper support, you can always fall back to using the following command line:

Graphics

flatpak update

Systems without flatpak support

GIMP can also run on Solaris and is available for the BSD family of systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Please refer to the documentation for your Unix-like system on the installation of software.

GIMP for macOS

The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.

Supported OS: macOS 10.9 Mavericks or over

Since the 2.8.2 version, GIMP runs on OSX natively. No X11 environment is required.

Native build

The official GIMP 2.10 DMG installer (linked above) is a stock GIMP build without any add-ons. Just open the downloaded DMG and drag and drop GIMP into your 'Applications' folder.

The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.12-x86_64.dmg is: 8b964ad3dbbe31d0fa48fb834aa4c17fc0eb81becbc4595a57b04e3d4fc6efeb

Older Downloads

Previous installers for OSX can be found here: download.gimp.org.

Macports

An easy way to compile and install GIMP and other great Free software on your Mac is by using Macports. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages. To install gimp using Macports, you simply do sudo port install gimp once you have Macports installed.

Last we checked, the GIMP port file pointed to the current stable release and we have reports from people who've built GIMP successfully this way.

Homebrew

Homebrew is similar to Macports and provides packages (aka formulas) to install, either by compiling them from source or by using pre-made binaries. There are indications that there is now a formula for GIMP, installable with: brew tap caskroom/cask && brew cask install gimp.

NOTE! Please be aware that it was announced recently that Homebrew is using analytics. To turn this off in homebrew then run: brew analytics off
You can read more about this on Brew Analytics.

Fink

Fink is a package repository that offer mostly precompiled binaries. It provides the apt-get command known to e.g. Debian and Ubuntu users, and installing GIMP is as easy as sudo apt-get install gimp once you have installed the Fink installer.
If there's no binary package, then fink install gimp will compile GIMP from source.

Disclaimer: we haven't been able to determine if it is possible to install or build recent GIMP from Fink. Last we checked, GIMP 2.6.12 appears to be the most recent GIMP package that is offered there.

GIMP for Windows

The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.

Supported OS: Windows 7 or over

These links download the official GIMP installer for Windows (~200 MB). The installer contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of GIMP, and will automatically use the appropriate one.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing system. It works by downloading GIMP from a distributed network of BitTorrent users, and may improve download speed dramatically. Choosing this option will download the torrent file for the GIMP installer. You may need to install a torrent client to make use of this file. Learn more...

Hash Sum

The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.12-setup-3.exe is: 90038ea1895b2fe2a63fe6f69fc2115161b9af6a509e96ee08371138260de45e

Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.12-setup-3.exe

Older Downloads

  • Previous v2.10 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
  • Previous v2.8 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.

GIMP User Manual

These links download language-specific Windows installers for GIMP's local help. By default, they will place the help files with your GIMP installation.

Note: GIMP uses online help by default. If you want to use this local help offline, you will need to change GIMP's help settings.

  1. In GIMP, select [Edit] > [Preferences] > [Help System]
  2. For 'User manual', select 'Use a locally installed copy'
  3. Under 'Help Browser', you can choose between your system's web browser and GIMP's help browser plugin (if available).

Graphic Editor Free

See the online help for more settings.

  • Chinese Simplified (24.3 MB)
  • Catalan (24.2 MB)
  • Danish (24.2 MB)
  • Dutch (24.3 MB)
  • English (24.2 MB)
  • English (United Kingdom) (24.2 MB)
  • French (25.7 MB)
  • German (28.0 MB)
  • Greek (24.0 MB)
  • Italian (30.2 MB)
  • Japanese (23.6 MB)
  • Korean (24.9 MB)
  • Norwegian Nynorsk (20.9 MB)
  • Russian (24.9 MB)
  • Slovenian (24.3 MB)
  • Spanish (24.9 MB)
  • Swedish (24.7 MB)

Source for version 2.10 (Stable)

GIMP releases available from gimp.org and its mirrors contain the source code and have to be compiled in order to be installed on your system.

For instructions, how to build GIMP from source code, please see this page.

GIMP 2.10.12 is now available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.10/. You may want to read the Release Notes for GIMP 2.10.

To allow you to check the integrity of the tarballs, here are the hashes of the latest releases:

gimp-2.10.12.tar.bz2 (sha256):
7d80b58e0784120d57d327294f6a1fda281ff51a61935c2cd764da281acaac71
gimp-2.10.10.tar.bz2 (sha256):
12d1f243265c7aee1f2c6e97883a5c90ddc0b19b4346cf822e24adbb6c998c77
gimp-2.10.8.tar.bz2 (sha256):
d849c1cf35244938ae82e521b92b720ab48b8e9ed092d5de92c2464ef5244b9b
gimp-2.10.6.tar.bz2 (sha256):
4ec8071f828e918384cf7bc7d1219210467c84655123f802bc55a8bf2415101f
gimp-2.10.4.tar.bz2 (sha256):
ffb0768de14a2631b3d7ed71f283731441a1b48461766c23f0574dce0706f192
gimp-2.10.2.tar.bz2 (sha256):
1cb0baaecdefe44d371a15f2739a1bcbce4682336b4ccf8eb7b587ce52c333eb
gimp-2.10.0.tar.bz2 (sha256):
7fcc96fb88cb0a0595d2610f63a15dec245bb37bf9db527d37a24fb75e547de2
Graphics Editor For Mac

GIMP help files are available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/help/.

Please consider using one of the mirrors listed below.

Development snapshots

We now have a separate page for development versions of GIMP.

Vector Graphics Editor For Mac

Want to check out the GIMP development release?
Get it on our development downloads page.

Text Editor For Mac

FTP and Web Mirrors

Free Graphic Editor Software

We had a server move a while back that caused us to lose our existing mirrors (moved from physical to virtual server and to an environment that doesn't allow FTP access). On the plus side, we are now able to offer rsync access to download.gimp.org.

If you are running one of the existing GIMP mirrors, or want to create a new one, please contact us to get your rsync credentials.

Best Graphics Editor For Mac

Brazil
http://mirror.nbtelecom.com.br/gimp
rsync://mirror.nbtelecom.com.br::gimp
Czech Republic
http://mirror.vutbr.cz/gimp
ftp://mirror.vutbr.cz/gimp
rsync://mirror.vutbr.cz/gimp
Denmark
https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
ftp://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
rsync://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/
Finland
http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
rsync://rsync.nic.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/
France
http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
ftp://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
rsync://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/
http://pirbot.com/mirrors/gimp/
Germany
https://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/
ftp://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/
rsync://ftp.fau.de/gimp/
http://artfiles.org/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
Philippines
http://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/
ftp://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/
Poland
https://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
rsync://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/
gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl/1/pub/graphics/gimp/
Sweden
https://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
http://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
rsync://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp
United Kingdom
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
rsync://rsync.mirrorservice.org/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/
https://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
ftp://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
rsync://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/
http://gimp.galaxyverge.com/
United States
https://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
ftp://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
rsync://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/
http://gimp.cp-dev.com/
ftp://devhost.cp-dev.com/gimp
rsync://gimp.cp-dev.com/gimp
http://pirbot.com/mirrors/gimp/