HN Explorer

Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?

54 points by blackeyeblitzar ↗ HN
There have been many posts about Adobe’s aggressive and unethical updates to their terms of service. For many companies, like those in healthcare, use of Adobe products is now off limits. I don’t think an update to their terms can rebuild the lost trust. At the same time, most professionals have only ever used Adobe products like Photoshop and they may resist moving away. What reasonable alternatives even exist for each of Adobe’s major products? Are there any true equivalents?

73 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] thread
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
coffeefirst
https://affinity.serif.com is quite good. It's not the same, but I switched (95% personal use) when Adobe forced everyone onto subscriptions and it's been more than sufficient for that.
hightrix
Seconded. The whole affinity suite is really nice and feels pretty comfy.

It is also reasonably priced and no subscription.

blackeyeblitzar
I read that they were acquired by Canva. Does that create any risk of their pricing changing to a subscription model or maybe a risk of them adopting the same terms as Adobe?
joe_hills
I concur on Affinity. For graphic design, pixel art, layout, and photo work I've switched to the Affinity suite.

I used Premiere for about two years but never liked it as much as Final Cut Pro X, so I'm back on FCPX for video now that I've got a better Mac to run it on.

FCPX and Affinity are both one-time purchases, which I appreciate.

tracker1
Would definitely buy if they either had a Linux version, or ran in WINE.
tambourine_man
It is surprisingly good, it still lacks many features but it's a welcome competition in the field. However, I wouldn't go through the trouble of leaving Adobe for another closed source suite. The underdogs are always the good guys until they aren't.

If/when I ditch Adobe, it will be for an open source stack.

k8sToGo
Aren’t they also going the subscription way soon?
kypro
I didn't switch for ethical reasons, but Photopea is such brilliant editor that for most of my Photoshop needs I use that now. Photoshop is way more powerful and Photopea probably wouldn't be suitable for power users, but as a techy that occasionally needs to do a bit of cropping or a some basic photo editing it's a great tool and does everything I used to use Photoshop for.
TrevorFSmith
My free stack, 2024 edition: Fedora Linux Sway spin, Inkscape, GNU Image Manipulation Program, KdenLive, Natron, Blender, FreeCAD, KiCAD, OpenSCAD, Orca slicer, IceCat, Zulip, LibreOffice, and a flock of CLI tools
fsloth
2024 and Gimp remains horrible (as it has always been). It’s cool it brings value to you and others but Photoshop replacement it is not.
opan
With enough disgruntled ex-Adobe users looking for something new, you'd think GIMP would be improved or replaced by better free software.

I feel that people switching to another proprietary thing will just run into problems again in the future. It makes more sense to come up with a permanent solution.

worksonmine
Depends what you need it for. I don't think it's bad but my use-cases are very simple.
jwells89
IMO many of its most glaring issues could be fixed by “simply” (I know it’s probably more involved in reality) swapping out bespoke widgets for standard GTK counterparts with more standard/commonly familiar behaviors.

The poster child for this is easily the layers palette. It looks like a scrolling list widget like you’d find on any major desktop OS released in the past 30 years but doesn’t behave like one, with oddities like inability to multi-select. Instead, the user is expected to learn GIMP-specific behaviors that aren’t useful in any other program. There’s not really a good reason for this, aside for familiarity for existing users and while that’s an important thing to consider I’m not sure it’s worth impeding retention of new users.

fsloth
IMHO the problems in the usability of the software go far deeper than simply switching the widgets.

This is not to shit on Gimp! It's a completely adequate package of various image processing algorithms.

However, this does not make it a replacement for Photoshop for a large segment of users.

I've been using Photoshop for 30 years and tried to use gimp for 25 years :D

tambourine_man
Roughly the same amount of years here, same conclusion.

I'd love to ditch Adobe for an open stack. I've day-dreamed about creating an open alternative to Photoshop many times. It's a daunting task, it would take many years of dedication for reaching even a mediocre competitor to the 90s Photoshop.

t0bia_s
Adobe monopoly needs to be taken down one day. It's paradox, that in creative, free world, you are tight to one piece software that dictate a way how to make digital visual production. If you want to make living in this industry, you really don't have other options.
Gigachad
Gimp is painful to use for even once off small stuff. If you at all do anything commercially, the benefits of photoshop would have paid for itself over gimp.
paulgb
I canceled my Adobe Premiere Pro subscription a while back, not because of AI terms but because other dark patterns in how they bill gave me a bad taste. I switched to DaVinci Resolve, which has a pretty capable free version. (I haven't used it extensively enough to comment on whether I will miss Premiere in the long run)
k1ns
Davinci Resolve is super powerful, even in its free version. Every project I have learned something new that it can do. Highly recommend.
magicalhippo
Any good guides for basic editing? Tried it a couple of times some years ago and couldn't get it working and/or got lost in settings.
sumnole
I switched a long time ago. I use Affinity Photo and Corel PaintShop Pro. Only features I feel I'm missing out on are the generative ai features in latest Photoshop versions.
tracker1
I used to use PaintShop Pro a lot... After the second Corel release I dropped it because I didn't like the direction it took. I do wish that Affinity had at least good WINE support for being able to run in Linux.

I just hate GIMP myself, never liked it and it feels extra clunky. For quick edits, I can usually get away with Pinta (Paint.Net fork), but would like something more. I've thought about digging out an old copy of JASC PSP, which IIRC ran fine under WINE.

contingencies
Adobe only supports Windows/Mac and they want a subscription fee license, so they can shove their software.

Illustrator (used since 1990s) -> Inkscape, Krita

Photoshop (used since v3.0) -> Gimp, imagemagick, rembg

If I were doing loads of design work I would still prefer Adobe. However, I can use the above with a Wacom tablet on Linux and feel very productive. Linux largely allows scripting so I open Gimp a lot less then I used to use Photoshop, eg. due to imagemagick convert/mogrify, rembg, etc. Haven't used PS in a decade maybe. Haven't used Illustrator in a year or more. Hope that helps.

grishka
For personal use, cracked Adobe products.

I myself have switched from Illustrator to Affinity Designer several years ago, but Photoshop is somehow irreplaceable for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dole
I drag around a 60MB portable version of CS3 that does 99% of anything I'd need to do.

I've found myself missing out on the generative AI fill train but recently discovered Krita AI diffusion, not too difficult to set up and use from a PS diehard, and pretty magical.

https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion

add-sub-mul-div
I wasn't an Adobe user before but I started learning video editing and DaVinci Resolve has been great. It's free for my needs, and the paid version is a reasonable one time cost and not a subscription.

It's not even a matter of settling for an alternative because of Adobe, from the advice I've seen Resolve is what you'd go with today anyway.

atum47
Left Adobe long ago. I Use Gimp instead of Photoshop.

Fair thing to say is that I don't do that much image/video editing these days.

When I was a 3D artist I found very hard to migrate from 3Ds Max, Vray and Photoshop, especially in ArchViz.

Octoth0rpe
For my very limited photoshop-ish needs, Pixelmator Pro has been great.
tryptophan
I switched to pdfgear as an alternative to acrobat/dc for all my pdf needs. Free and better than acrobat.
daft_pink
I switched to pdfexpert and Final Cut pro and saved so much money and no longer limited to just two machines. Never look back
throwadobe
Some old, cracked version of Photoshop
tambourine_man
Unfortunately, Adobe tools were already on its own league before the recent AI revolution. They are now even more untouchable.

I say that with deep regret not only because of the update to the terms of service, but because they are terrible OS citizens, downright user hostile in many situations and a monopoly.

cheema33
> they are terrible OS citizens

I used to feel this way. And then I discovered their Spectrum design and React libraries. I use them in production. And I am a huge fan. I don't think anything like this exists. Opensource or commercial.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of UI libraries. But nothing has the breadth of coverage that Spectrum does, including design guidelines.

https://spectrum.adobe.com/ https://github.com/adobe/react-spectrum

And Spectrum 2 is expected later this year.

tambourine_man
By OS, I meant Operating Systems, not Open Source :)

Their apps are such foreigners in their ecosystem that they make Electron apps look good by comparison. Also, Creative Cloud spreads itself over every folder it can touch, keeps nagging me to use cloud-whatever, fights me for auto launching and updating, etc.

That's what I meant as a bad platform citizen.

blackeyeblitzar
Here’s the full list of Adobe Creative Cloud products for which it would be great to identify alternatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Creative_Cloud#Desktop,_...

I think the big ones are:

Acrobat

Audition

Illustrator

InDesign

Lightroom

Photoshop

Premiere

I think a lot of people also use Fonts and Stock just because it’s convenient but they aren’t the same type of desktop product as the other ones.

jbecke
Macro.com for PDF (better than Acrobat)
Kronopath
I’m not much of an artist, so for my limited photo manipulation needs Acorn is cheap, subscriptionless, and way more than enough for me:

https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

ndaiger
I have been using Acorn since...wow, 2009!

After the first $49 purchase, I spent another $15 and then $19 on upgrades over the years.

It's very effective. The interface is extremely familiar if you're used to Photoshop, and it's wonderfully Mac-native.

I highly recommend it!

1propionyl
Photoshop -> Pixelmator Pro

Illustrator -> Affinity Designer

InDesign -> Affinity Publisher

Premiere/AfterEffects -> DaVinci Resolve

All one-time payment licenses. I cancelled my Adobe subscription a couple years ago. It was such a mess of dark patterns to get out of it. Good riddance.

soupcahtoa
I was a comic artist. In the past decade virtually everyone I know switched from Photoshop to Clip Studio Paint. It was cheaper, more lightweight and had features comic artists needed like streamlined flatting tools and manga asset integration.
chirau
For Photoshop:

1) Photopea (quite brilliant for most of the things photoshop can do)

2) paint.net for not too advanced edits

3) Krita

For After Effects:

1) Natron

2) BlackMagic Fusion

For Premiere Pro:

1) DaVinci Resolve

2) KdenLive

For Illustrator:

1) Inkscape

2) Graphite

Please note that most of these are not feature for feature replacements, but for the most part and most common tasks, they are very good offerings.

invalidname
Photopea is fantastic. I've paid Adobe thousands over the years because my spouse uses Photoshop and can't stop (I use Sketch when I need something).

I had enough with Adobe mostly due to cost. It's robbery to pay those prices for a tool she uses 3 times a year. I tried installing Krita for her and she struggled with everything. Couldn't find anything and just complained all the time. It occurred to me to try something else and Photopea is absolutely amazing. Wish I knew about it sooner.

pupppet
I actually prefer Photopea over Affinity Photo, it’s a shameless clone right down to the keyboard shortcuts which at this point are muscle memory.