Compositor
The Photoshop alternative for Mac — free, open source, and always yours
Product Overview
Compositor is a free, open source image editor for Mac designed as a lightweight Photoshop alternative for professional compositing and post-processing. Built by Robbie Tilton, it weighs just 12MB. The editor is built around a compositing workflow: layers, folders, layer masks, clipping masks, blend modes, adjustment layers, selection tools, and filters. It includes background removal, Gaussian blur, motion blur, lens correction, grain and noise, liquify and smear, spot healing, clone stamp, and brush tools. Everything is open source — you can download the Xcode project and add, remove, or modify any feature. The goal is a full-featured image editor that is completely free, familiar enough to stay in flow, and produces pixel-perfect final images.
Best For
Best for Mac users who want a free, lightweight, open source alternative to Photoshop for compositing and post-processing
Key Features
- Layers, folders, layer masks, and clipping masks
- Blend modes and adjustment layers
- Selection tools for precise editing
- Background removal, Gaussian blur, motion blur
- Lens correction, grain and noise
- Liquify and smear tools
- Spot healing and clone stamp
- Brush tool
- Free and open source on GitHub
- Lightweight at just 12MB
Pros
- +Free and open source
- +Lightweight and fast at 12MB
- +Purpose-built for compositing workflow
- +Familiar Photoshop-like interface
- +Customizable via Xcode source
Cons
- -macOS only, no Windows or Linux
- -No PSD support mentioned
- -Smaller plugin ecosystem than Photoshop
- -Newer project, still maturing
/// SPECS
- Pricing:Free
- Platform:macOS
- Free and open source on GitHub
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