What’s a good way to extract the layers from a PhotoShop file, without using PhotoShop?

Question

I would install PhotoShop. I really would. But Adobe seems to insist on me also having Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Updater, and something else — about a gigabyte of software I don’t want gumming up my system.

But I still want to be able to extract the layers from a PhotoShop file as images, with transparency preserved. I’m a fussy one.

Any tools that do this, aside from PhotoShop itself?

Answer 1

You can use Paint.Net with the PSD plugin (+ support thread) to open the PSD file, and then copy and paste individual layers to new documents.

^{Newer plugin releases may not work with old Paint.net versions. But you can try out older plugin versions.
For example the PSD Plugin v1.04 works well with Paint.NET v3.3.6}

The same objective can also be fulfilled with The Gimp, but it is a much bigger install than Paint.Net.

Answer 2

Imagemagick can do it, it's a 6.4MB, free - as in Richard Stallman - download.

Answer 3

Try the free online painting software Pixlr. It allows you to load and edit PSD's without the need to install anything.

Adobe also have a free online version of Photoshop but I'm not sure it allows you to upload and edit PSDs.

Answer 4

On the Mac, Pixelmator can access the layers in PhotoShop files.

Answer 5

Adobe Bridge and Adobe Updater take about 130MB on your HD, not 1GB. (And this is from the latest version of Photoshop.) It's a necessary evil and well worth it, but I appreciate your frustration.

I'd bite the bullet if I were you.