Photoshop CC Alternative

Photo management and editing is a vital aspect of modern-day digital photography that requires competent photo editors for their actualization. Since the invention of photography well over a century ago, the technology has continued to significantly improve. The most recent, being digital photography, which has, in no small way, opened the door to a whole new world of endless possibilities.

Different schools of thought have varied opinions on what the actual role of photo editors should be. Their views can be fairly distributed into two categories. One group supports the claim that picture editors can, to a large extent, replace professional image capturing techniques. The other strongly disagrees with these claims, stating that both technologies (photo editing and capturing) have their very distinct roles and that the implementation of one does not replace the other.

Being sentimental with one group or the other isn’t an objective approach. It’s better to focus on a more general view of how both techniques complement one another.

There are certain photo editors that rock, and your guess is probably as good as mine. But before I go on to talk about some of them, I’d like to take your mind down a little memory lane. What I like to refer to as the "evolution of digital photography".

The Evolution…

Those who have been around long enough to witness, in real-time, the beginning of the digital photography era are privileged to see how the technology has remarkably improved over a short period of time.

Unlike the strict limitations which the era of film photography suffered, digital photography has made it possible for us achieve incredible things - effects, edits and all. Users, photographers, graphic artists, and hobbyists, can now tweak almost any image detail - contrast, moving objects and image fragments. A full-color digital image can, in fact, be transformed into a black & white, sketch or painting.

We owe all of all these ‘endless possibilities’ to the esteemed app developers, the world over, particularly the world’s best, who continually devote so much time and resources to providing top-quality photo editing apps that help to make life a lot easier for everyone. Notable among these developers is Adobe and Skylum, just to mention a few.

Adobe’s Photoshop Creative Cloud

Photoshop has been around much longer than all its Creative Cloud contemporaries. The app’s cutting edge technology and enhanced capabilities are noteworthy - having a large application in photo adjustment, fine art, graphics & animation, medical image processing, 3D processing, modeling and more.

Until recently, one could purchase Photoshop for a tempting upfront payment, unlike its alternatives. This has changed with Adobe’s new introduction of the Creative Cloud packages -a subscription-based payment approach that now require users to access its services via the organization’s mandatory monthly and yearly packages.

Although this method is intended to boost Adobe’s quality of service to its clients, as well as check the circulation of unauthorized copies, the move has been greeted with a lot of mixed feelings.

Photoshop CC features an astounding range of options and consistency that endears it to users, particularly professionals, worldwide. Nevertheless, it does appear that the app is finding more acceptance and affordability among wealthy professionals.

Although Adobe has made its subscription packages affordable and flexible enough to accommodate users from all around the world, many are still of the opinion that the price is outrageous. The good news is that there are quite some editing apps that serve much the same function as Photoshop CC - at a more affordable rate. An example is Skylum’s Creative Kit.

Also, unlike the Creative Cloud that requires a sound technical know-how for its operation, the Creative Kit is easy to use, fast and intuitive, and can be utilized by anyone, irrespective of their skill level.

Skylum’s Creative Kit (CK 2016)

The Creative Kit is an astounding photo editing app that features a variety of highly intuitive, easy-to-use, and powerful creative tools that are well-suited for image retouching, photo enhancement, and photo creativity. Constituent apps of the Kit include pro versions of Focus, Tonality, Noiseless, FX Photo Studio, Snapheal, and Intensify.

Skylum CK is indeed an excellent alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop CC. Its photo editing and management capabilities, to say the least, are mind-blowing; supporting an impressive number of picture file formats, like RAW, TIFF, JPEG, PNG and more.

From basic photo editing functions like cropping, resizing and contrast fine-tuning, to more advanced tasks like photo-healing, background replacement, artistic effects and the likes, these four-consecutive-year award-winning apps do virtually everything that you’d find in Photoshop, and more, as far as photo editing is concerned.

Some of the fascinating features of the Creative Kit include over 500 highly creative tools, filters and presets. The package runs as a single standalone-installation, and as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and others.

A brief look at CK’s constituent apps to understanding why the Kit is a perfect alternative to Photoshop CC.

Typical of all Skylum’s apps, Noiseless CK is smart, highly intuitive and fast. Noiseless is great at helping you transform any disturbing, low-light image into an appealing, natural-looking masterpiece, in simple mouse-clicks.

The only one of its kind, Tonality CK, Apple’s Editor’s Choice, is unarguably the most advanced monochromatic image editor for Mac users. It features about 200 creative presets that can be explored and applied in moments.

Letting Intensify CK process your photo equals polishing and revealing its hidden beauty. You can also create spectacular and appealing effects in minutes.

Snapheal CK is the most advanced photo-healing app on the planet today. With Snapheal CK’s nine unique and super intelligent algorithms, you can easily fix, heal, remove, and perfect image details in any photo.

With Focus CK you can perform as much lens effect - tilt-shift, custom focus, and motion blur - as you would with a real lens. The difference being that Focus CK saves you the cost of having to purchase those expensive gears.

Skylum's creative powerhouse, FX Photo Studio CK, is equipped with over 200 filters, frames and effects, as well as thousands of unique artistic styles and presets that are suited for transforming your photos into amazing masterpieces. Alternatively you can get 30 photo filters for free with special dedicated app.

So you see, the Creative Kit isn’t just a perfect Photoshop CC alternative on paper. It does much more than one could ever accurately describe.