The .PSD (Photoshop Document) format stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, Clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality.

Since PSD files can be open and edited by Photoshop, not everyone is willing to spend thousands of dollars on Adobe Creative Suite 4 just to edit a few PSD files. Even if there is a pirated version of Adobe CS4, I am also reluctant to install the few GB of software just because I need to open and edit a few PSD files and then uninstall it once I’m done.

So here are are a few graphics tool which I found that is able to open PSD files without photoshop.

1. Paint.NET
Edit PSD with Paint.Net
- Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

By default Paint.NET doesn’t support opening PSD files. You’ll need to download a Paint.NET plug in for loading and saving Photoshop files. Do take note that the plug in does not support every feature, which is provided by the file format (there are lot’s of them). The author of this plugin have implemented only the stuff which has it’s counterpart in Paint.NET or if it is useful for converting the image to the Paint.NET internals. You’ll have to download and install Paint.NET first. Then you have to download the psdplugin, unzip and copy the PhotoShop.dll to the “FileTypes” folder in the Paint.NET directory. By default it should be in C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\FileTypes. Now you can open PSD files.

2. GIMP
Edit PSD with GIMP
- GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP supports opening PSD files by default and there is no need to install any plugins. All you need to do is just download and install GIMP. GIMP’s psd support is not perfect as of yet, though it is still quite good.

3. IrfanView
View PSD with IrfanView
- IrfanView is a very fast, compact and innovative FREEWARE image viewer/converter for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. IrfanView is fast and small, with extremely low system resources requirements. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

If you only want to view a PSD file, you can use this excellent image viewer software called IrfanView. Basically it can support opening many types of image files.
[ Download IrfanView ]

Do share with me if you know of any other method that can open and edit PSD files.

[tags]psd, photoshop, gimp, paint.net, irfanview[/tags]