As good an image editor GIMP is—out of the box, it can fall short of Photoshop at times. That said, you can use plugins to extend GIMP’s functionality, and these make it even more powerful than Photoshop.
Some of these plugins may not be compatible with GIMP 3 due to significant updates to the plugin API. You may need to install GIMP 2.x in order to use them until the developers update their respective plugins to be compatible with GIMP 3.
(GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing)
Having G’MIC installed is essentially like having hundreds of Photoshop filters and effects rolled into one massive package. If you’ve tried GIMP and found it lacking in creative filters compared to Photoshop, this plugin is the answer.
The plugin has over 600 filters across various categories, including Artistic, Black & White, Colors, Contours, Deformations, Film Emulation, and more. You can use it for anything from turning photos into cartoons to recreating complex color grading effects that can take hours to achieve manually.
Just like everything else with GIMP, the plugin will require you to go through a couple of tutorials. The intimidating interface with tons of options right away doesn’t help either. However, once you get used to it, you’ll find that its actually quite intuitive to use. You get a preview pane, a filter list, and customizable options for each effect.
You can also combine multiple filters. This is something that would take multiple layers to achieve in Photoshop, but G’MIC gets you quite close to perfection in a few clicks. The plugin is also constantly updated by an active community, meaning new filters are released frequently, and you can download additional ones without spending a dime.
GIMP’s lack of content-aware fill features was the reason why Photoshop won me back. However, the Rsynthesizer plugin adds features that can compete with Photoshop. The plugin is most famous for its Heal Selection feature, which can often produce better results than Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill.
Resynthesizer is much more than just an object removal tool. It has a Heal Transparency feature that’s perfect for extending image borders when you need to make your canvas bigger. There’s also Fill with Pattern Seamless which creates natural looking textures without obvious repetitive patterns.
There are other tools as well such as Heal Selection, Heal Transparency, and Uncrop that can reconstruct what might have been cropped earlier. Overall, Resynthesizer is a powerful plugin that can significantly improve your GIMP experience.
(Batch Image Manipulation Plugin)
Batch processing images was one of GIMP’s biggest weaknesses. If you ever needed to resize 100 photos or add watermarks to an entire portfolio, GIMP is a painful tool to use. Thankfully, BIMP solves this problem.
The plugin lets you create a pipeline of actions such as resize, rotate, color correct, add watermarks, change formats, and more to an entire collection of images. When working with big photo shoots or collections, this can save hours of mundane work.
The interface is also quite straightforward. You simply add the edits, select your images, and choose the output directory, and GIMP takes care of the rest. You can even combine it with other GIMP filters and plugins for more complex edits.
Darktable is less of a plugin and more a separate RAW processor. However, since GIMP doesn’t support RAW formats natively, you need an external tool like Darktable or RawTherapee to add this functionality.
Now RawTherapee is an excellent tool that totally changed how I develop photos. However, if you’re looking at GIMP integration, Darktable is the easier tool. Both tools integrate with GIMP in the same manner, but Darktable is more reliable, especially if you’re working with a higher number of images.
The integration allows you to open RAW files directly in GIMP, which in turn launches Darktable. Once you’re done making your adjustments, Darktable automatically imports the edited image to GIMP for you to start working with.
You get professional-grade RAW development tools that in some cases exceed what you get with Lightroom. This is also a great option if you want to ditch a Lightroom subscription and move to an Adobe-free image editing pipeline.
Panorama photography is a complicated process that requires specialized software. GIMP also doesn’t have any native tools to facilitate this, and that’s where Hugin comes in. The plugin lets you stitch multiple images together to create wide panoramic views. It’s often helpful for landscape or architectural photography where your lens might not be wide enough for a shot.
Hugin handles the complex math of aligning images, compensating for lens distortion, and blending exposures. The automatic alignment is surprisingly accurate, and you can always fine tune everything if needed.
If you’re into portrait photography, this one will be a lifesaver. Beautify, as the name suggests, brings professional-grade skin retouching to GIMP. The plugin focuses entirely on facial enhancement and portrait work without making the workflow too complicated.
Portrait retouching capabilities were one of the key areas where Photoshop won against GIMP. However, Beautify provides sliders for skin smoothing, blemish removal, and facial feature enhancement. It focuses on creating a more natural skin tone rather than the over-processed, plastic-like appearance that some automatic beauty filters produce.
Overall, Beautify will streamline your skin retouching workflow significantly. Instead of working manually with healing tools and adjustment layers, you can get professional-looking results with a few slider adjustments.
Keep in mind that Beautify is quite old, with the last updates made 13 years ago according to its official GitHub repository. Plugins like G’MIC and Resyntesizer now have capabilities that can exceed Beautify. However, if you want a simple approach to skin retouching that provides enough control for beginners to start getting the hang of the workflow, Beautify still holds its ground.
Liquid Rescale is GIMP’s equivalent to Photoshop’s Content Aware Scale feature. The plugin lets you resize images non-uniformly without distorting them—intelligently adding or removing content from less important areas of the image.
This is another old plugin, with the last update releasing in August 2013. However, the plugin does still hold its own. The code is also available on GitHub if you want to take a peek under the hood.
You can create preservation masks to protect important parts of your image and the algorithm automatically removes or adds pixels from the areas you’ve designated as less important. This means you can change aspect ratios or fit images in a specific dimension without the weird stretching effect you’d get with normal scaling.
It almost feels like magic when you first try it. I often use this plugin for social media content where I need to fit horizontal images into vertical formats. It can also be used for professional work, but you will have to be careful with your images.
GIMP may not be the perfect Photoshop alternative right out of the box. However, thanks to its community-driven plugin ecosystem, you can add back a lot of lost functionality—and in some cases make it even more powerful than Photoshop.
