ArtWeaver: a Viable, Free Photoshop Alternative?

Filed under: Design, Photo, Windows, Freeware

ArtWeaver: a Viable, Free Photoshop Alternative?

by Lee Mathews Sep 14th 2008

Before the shouting begins, no, ArtWeaver is not a Photoshop "clone."

You won't find the same multitude of tools Photoshop offers, but ArtWeaver is a promising option for people wanting a slimmed-down alternative that offers the functions that beginning and intermediate users want.

Artweaver's interface is uncomplicated and should be comfortable for anyone who's used Photoshop before. The included help file is very detailed, and provides tons of information and useful tips to get you started.

So, what kind of tools does Artweaver offer?

Selection tools: Rectangular and eliptical selection, freehand and polygonal lasso, magic wand
Brushes: standard, airbrush, cloning, and a ton of "artist" brushes (like charcoal, chalk, felt pen, pencil, impasto)
Shapes tool: rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and custom shapes
Eraser, paint bucket, stamp, crop, and move tools
A nice set of color palettes (Windows, Mac, Web, etc.)
Filters
Grid and perspective grid overlays

Tablet input is supported, and Artweaver provides an easy calibration tool. Pressure settings can be tied to effects like opacity, grain, jitter, angle, and flow on your brush tool's advanced palette. It's also much less resource-intensive than Photoshop and runs very well on my Intel Atom-powered netbook.

Couple Artweaver's core functionality with the fact that it can be extended by plugins, it certainly has the potential to be a very competent Photoshop alternative.

Tags: alternatives, photo-editing, photoshop

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jaymoon said 5:41PM on 9-14-2008

Biggest problem I've had with ArtWeaver so far is that any previously saved PSD files through Photoshop will open, but they will be flattened.

What's the point of opening a PSD if it can't read the layers?

It seems to be a nice quick program (wine-compatible too for Linux users), for make a simple edit. But anything more than that, I'll stick with Photoshop.

David said 5:50PM on 9-14-2008

Can you watermark on it easily?

Greg said 6:04PM on 9-14-2008

What can it do that http://www.paint.net or http://www.gimp.org/ can't? Both of which seem to already do everything show, as a matter of fact it looks almost like paint.net clone.

Fred Thompson said 7:44PM on 9-14-2008

Active Pixels is a good option, too. http://idea-systems.net/
I found paint.net to be too limiting and Gimp too awkward. YMMV. I still use an old version of Paint Shop Pro because it's so hard to find a color replacer brush in the free apps. Don't forget PhotoFiltre http://photofiltre.free.fr/frames_en.htm

GAM said 8:09PM on 9-14-2008

Maybe you should read your first sentence slowly...

"Before the shouting beings..."

:-)

Anyway, thanks for bringing ArtWeaver to our attention, I believe it is the first time I hear about it....

Lee Mathews said 8:09PM on 9-14-2008

Nice catch, thank you, cookies in the mail! :-)

Fyrewerx said 8:31PM on 9-14-2008

Its "almost" PaintshopPro, circa mid-80's, all over again. Not bad for the small, quick work.

obo said 12:30AM on 9-15-2008

It's a Photoshop SE clone?

LeeH said 9:40AM on 9-15-2008

This appears to be a *painting* program *not* a photo editing program so it's more of an alternative to Corel Painter than to Photoshop.

Lee Mathews said 9:42AM on 9-15-2008

Well, I used it quite a bit. It seems to edit photos just fine. You'll have to clarify the issue for us!

Ross Eames said 2:22PM on 9-15-2008

"GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."-gimp.org

"Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting,..."-artweaver.de

I have allways thought that GIMP kicked ass, and the strong development community has added features that don't exactly clone those of Photoshop, but provide unique scripts, filters and other great stuff.

I've used Gimp on windows since 2003, and its a great Photoshop alternative. Maybe not the best at creating original art, but i rarely "paint" with my mouse.

(also try Inkscape as a Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator alternative.)

Superevil said 1:51PM on 9-16-2008

MSPaint has worked fine for me for years. :)

Ek kian said 10:04AM on 9-20-2008

If you search for free Photoshop alternative then maybe you can consider to use GimPhoto. (http://www.gimphoto.com)

actually GimPhoto is GIMP modification with new menu layout and shortcut, packed with many great plugins, such as: separation, save for web, batch process, noise removal and photography filters, and also improved with new brushset, new gradientset, every aspect is tweaked to improve user usability.

available for Windows and Linux (all distro).

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