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Both cover photo editing. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Aftershoot | GIMP | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $120 | Free |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Annual only | Not stated |
| Free trial | 30 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | macOS, Windows | macOS, Windows, Linux |
| Covers | Photo Editing, AI Content Tools | Photo Editing, Design & Graphics |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Culls and edits a wedding shoot overnight
Aftershoot learns from edits a photographer has already made and then applies that style to a whole shoot, after throwing out the blinks, the blurs and the duplicates. For anyone delivering thousands of frames a wedding, culling is the job it saves most of. Plans are sold by how many images a year you put through it, and everything exports back into Lightroom or Capture One rather than replacing them.
Our note
The thirty days matter more here than on most trials, because the tool has to learn your style before the output is worth judging. Feed it a whole delivered wedding early rather than a handful of frames, or the trial will tell you nothing.
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A free image editor for retouching and paint
GIMP has been the free answer to a paid image editor since the nineties, covering retouching, compositing, painting and format conversion, with scripting for the jobs you do a hundred times. Its colour management is strong enough for print work. The interface is its own rather than a copy of anyone else's, which is the real cost of switching to it.
Our note
The honest comparison is not against Photoshop feature by feature but against what you actually do, and for retouching and compositing most people never reach the edge of it. Photopea is worth a look first if you want something Photoshop-shaped in a browser tab.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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