Alternatives to xquartz for mac install#
Alternatives to xquartz for mac software#
Alternatives to xquartz for mac professional#

Alternatives to xquartz for mac install#

It’s powerful, flexible and free, but the Mac version just isn’t nice to use – even the installation process is hard work ( notably, the latest release doesn’t even have an installer and requires you to build it yourself using HomeBrew or MacPorts – as well as install the XQuartz package manually ). It also looks horrible on the Mac, the interface looks like it’s returned to the olden days when I used to use Sun Solaris desktop. Lots of people create some extremely talented work using Inkscape, but it is absolutely not beginner friendly. But I’ve included it here because it’s one that I do use. It’s also worth pointing out that although I’ve included Inkscape in this post, Inkscape is more of an Adobe Illustrator competitor rather than a PhotoShop competitor. Inkscape is another alternative, but I found Inkscape to be ugly, requires an extra download on the Mac as you’ll need to install XQuartz – and this package, although produced by Apple themselves as it used to be part of the MacOS operating system to provide XWindows compatibility ( a UNIX windowing system, since MacOS is largely based on the UNIX OS ), the need to install and run a separate application just adds clutter.

Alternatives to xquartz for mac software#

Inkscape Logo – Free Vector Design Software Others are desktop apps, and it’s these which provide the best functionality match for Photoshop simply because of that web based limitations. Some are online, web based such as Pixlr, which works well but is limited by the web based technology. There’s a host of free alternatives to Adobe PhotoShop for the Mac. So, it’s fabulous software, but it’s just too expensive for me. Admittedly that comes with 100G of cloud storage, but I have no need for additional cloud storage and just want to use the app occasionally. They’ve switched to a subscription model which means you now pay monthly for a licence to use them – the licence to use one product is around 20UKP per month. The problem with the Adobe Creative Suite range of products is that, for the average person who wants to just play around with some occasional designs or photo manipulation, the Adobe products are expensive. But on the Mac, Adobe tends to be the de-facto choice. Of course, Adobe are the benchmark when it comes to image manipulation – they’ve dominated this space for decades, although they do have some competition on the Windows platform in the form of Corel who produce PaintShop Pro, as well as CorelDraw and other applications for image manipulation.

Alternatives to xquartz for mac professional#

I’m an extreme novice when it comes to image manipulation, being more of a techie than a designer, but occasionally I dabble with playing around with designs for some of my online shops ( shameless plug: if you’re a Healthcare Professional then have a look at for some great gift ideas – it’s my latest project! ) and I’ve been looking for an alternative to the PhotoShop suite for the Mac. Affinity Photo Vs Photoshop- Who wins the race