Compositor is a free, open-source Photoshop alternative for Mac

A new open-source Mac app offers a familiar Photoshop workflow without the monthly subscription.

Developer Robbie Tilton built Compositor because Photoshop costs too much and tools like GIMP feel awkward to use. It's a free, native macOS image editor focused on compositing and post-processing. The app includes layer masks, non-destructive transforms, content-aware fill, live adjustment layers, and standard Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. It racked up over 2,400 GitHub stars in its first week.

Why it matters: Most design tools today live behind recurring paywalls or heavy web wrappers. Compositor is fully native, fast, and MIT-licensed. If a feature is missing, you can open the project in Xcode and code it yourself.

To run or build it, you'll need macOS 26 and Xcode 26. You can download the source code on GitHub and build the scheme directly.

Your muscle memory gets to stay, but the Adobe invoice doesn't.