5 Ways Photoshop Is Superior to GIMP

Many people want to prove that they can live without Photoshop . GIMP seems like a perfect alternative, but after using it for a while, some people still feel like something is missing. Ultimately, Photoshop still has people hooked, and for good reason.

5. Photoshop is easier to learn

The first hurdle you'll encounter when starting out with GIMP is the learning curve, starting with the user interface. It's not bad, and once you get used to it, it's easy to use. However, getting used to it can be a challenge.

The location of the tools and even their names are completely different. For example, the Magic Wand tool, which almost everyone uses in Photoshop, is called the Foreground Select Tool in GIMP. For beginners or even veteran Photoshop users, it will take at least a tutorial or a few tries to get used to it.

GIMP also defaults to multi-window mode, which makes basic navigation difficult. You can customize the UI and switch to single-window mode, but this makes the menus dense and filled with tools named differently than anything you see in Photoshop. If you switch, your Photoshop muscle memory will be useless.

In contrast, Photoshop's user interface is more polished, customizable, and friendly to both beginners and pros. Toolbars are contextually organized and everything is clearly labeled, saving you time searching for tools and more time working on your images.

4. Better AI features and content recognition

Photoshop has dozens of near-magical tools. Want to erase something from a photo? Just click. Want AI to fill in parts of your photo? Photoshop can do it easily. Adobe's focus on integrating AI tools and neural filters puts Photoshop ahead of GIMP in this area.

Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill feature is particularly useful. Generative Fill , powered by Adobe's Firefly AI, can generate entire images based on a test prompt or the content of an image. This makes tasks like portrait retouching, sky replacement, background blurring, enhancement, and anything that requires removing or adding details to an image easy.

3. Wider Extension Ecosystem

Both GIMP and Photoshop support external, third-party plugins that provide additional functionality. However, Photoshop's wider user base means you'll have more options, both free and paid, when it comes to extensions or plugins than you do with GIMP.

Whether it's plugins, brushes, LUTs, actions, or professionally developed templates, Photoshop has you covered. Adobe even has a dedicated marketplace called Adobe Exchange, which offers plugins and integrations for Photoshop and other Adobe programs.

2. Multi-device support

One of Photoshop's greatest strengths is its cross-device support. You can run Photoshop on anything from a Windows or macOS workstation to your phone if you want to edit your photos on the go. This also allows you to use different input devices to work on different parts of your image.

If you're working on a PC and want to switch to an iPad to use your Apple Pencil , Photoshop will seamlessly transfer your files between the two versions. Adobe's Creative Cloud lets you save your documents to the cloud and make them available to you on any device that has Photoshop installed and is signed in to an Adobe account.

1. Adobe Camera Raw built-in

Photoshop supports Adobe Camera Raw right out of the box. This gives photographers professional RAW editing tools directly into Photoshop – exposure adjustments, color grading, lens corrections, advanced noise reduction, and more – without compromising image quality.

This is also one of the biggest reasons why many people can't continue using GIMP. The majority of work when using Photoshop or GIMP is processing photos. GIMP does not support RAW files directly and needs to go through an external program like RawTherapee .

To be fair, cramming so many features into a free program is no easy task. GIMP does almost everything Photoshop can do, and it does it without requiring so much as a subscription—a fact we can't ignore. Still, at least for some specific use cases, Photoshop is currently the winner.

Lesley Montoya

Update 01 August 2025