A Free Photoshop for Mac, No Subscription

A Mac editor born from a small annoyance

Robbie Tilton wanted to edit images the way Photoshop lets you, without paying what Photoshop costs. He tried GIMP, the long-standing free option, but it didn't feel familiar enough to keep him in flow. So he built his own and called it Compositor.

It's free, open source and made for Mac. It covers what people reach for when they combine images or polish a photo: layers, masks, clipping masks, blend modes, adjustment layers and retouching tools. Coverage puts the whole app at about 12 MB, which is tiny.

Why people noticed

The project has gathered 16.6k stars on GitHub and around 1.6k forks, and it keeps moving. Version 1.4 handed canvas drawing to the graphics chip, so editing feels quicker. Later updates got better at opening Photoshop files, which matters: your old work doesn't have to stay stuck where it is.

One catch: it needs macOS 26.0 or later on an Apple silicon Mac.

What it means for you

If your team pays for Photoshop seats just to touch up product shots, adjust social graphics or cut out a background, this is worth an afternoon. Maybe it won't cover everything your designer does, and that's fine. It's also a quiet reminder that one person with a clear itch can build a tool thousands of people pick up.

Words worth knowing

• Open source: the recipe is public. Anyone can read it, improve it or build on it.
• MIT license: a very relaxed license. You can use the software, even for business, with almost no strings attached.
• GPU: the graphics chip in your computer, built to draw pixels fast.
• Fork: a personal copy of a project that someone makes to tweak or experiment with.

Have a look: github.com/robbietilton/Compositor