27 of the best alternatives to popular Adobe apps (2024)

As the firm that provides Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and multiple other useful apps through its Creative Cloud subscription model, Adobe is one of the most prominent firms in the software industry. But over the years, Adobe has attracted a lot of criticism for its anti-consumer antics. Just a few days ago, Adobe shot itself in the foot when the San Jose-based firm amended its Terms of Use.

Besides other controversial statements regarding the deletion of old accounts, the company’s new ToU stated that it will gain full access to anything created with its tools, though Adobe has since clarified it won't train AI on user-created content following major backlash from the community. If you’re someone who wants to transition away from the Adobe ecosystem, then we have compiled a list of the best alternatives to help you get started.

Best Adobe Photoshop alternatives

A name that has become synonymous with photo-editing, Photoshop still remains Adobe’s most popular tool for creating and editing raster images. Luckily, there are many contenders after Photoshop’s crown, with many offering the same – or even better features – than Adobe’s flagship application. In fact, the list is so big that I had to split the options into two categories: offline and online applications. For offline applications that you need to install on your system, you have:

• 

  Amazing for digital artists

  Krita

  If you’re looking for a free application to create raster 2D artwork, then Krita is hands-down the best alternative to Photoshop. From tons of brush options to support for Android and Linux, this open-source tool is a godsend for digital artists who need an open-source app for their painting or storyboarding needs.

  See at Krita

• 

  Ideal for beginners

  Pixelmator Pro

  Despite including the word Pro in its name, Pixelmator Pro has an extremely simple interface that bears a lot of similarities to the beloved Apple UI. This makes it an easy recommendation for newcomers to the image editing and illustration industry. While it doesn’t natively support the CMYK color profile, Pixelmator Pro’s native integration with Apple Photo provides another layer (pun intended) of simplicity to the app.

  $50 at Apple Apps

• 

  Complex, but laden with features

  Affinity Photo

  $35 $70 Save $35

  Infamous for its difficulty curve, Affinity Photo is a professional image editor that packs all the tools you need from a Photoshop alternative to touch up and enhance photographs. It’s frequently discounted on Affinity’s website, and once you purchase the license to the app, you’re free to use it on all your Windows, macOS, and iPadOS devices.

  $35 at Affinity

GIMP is yet another open-source tool that's worth trying out if you want a free alternative to Photoshop that isn't Krita. But in case you don’t wish to download more applications on your system, you might want to check out these web applications instead:

• 

  All-rounder raster image editor

  Canva

  Canva has gained a lot of popularity among graphic designers recently, and for good reason. Besides including several text and graphics elements, Canva’s web app is armed with a host of built-in templates, styles, and layouts that you can add to your projects. While Canva has a steep subscription fee, it provides a great online alternative to Photoshop, especially if you want AI image generation provisions for your designs.

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  See at Canva

• 

  Best bang-for-the-buck option

  Pixlr

  Affordable and filled with time-saving tools, Pixlr is cheaper than Canva if you go for the premium plans. It’s also easier to edit pictures on Pixlr, though you might want to look elsewhere if you want to use AI features in your project. And that’s because Pixlr uses a credit-based system where the app deducts points from your account every time you leverage an AI tool in your project.

  See at Pixlr

• 

  Budget app

  Photopea

  Photopea is a free raster-based image editing platform that’s good for light image editing. Besides displaying ads, Photopea’s web app admittedly lacks most of the features included in Canva and Pixlr. However, it makes up on the affordability front. It also has hundreds of community-created templates. Additionally, Photopea lets you create Javascript plugins for its web app, and you can even import its API onto your website if you so desire.

  See at Photopea

Best Adobe Illustrator alternatives

Unlike Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing and image editing tool. For the uninitiated, vector tools store projects as mathematical formulas instead of pixels. As such, you won’t encounter any loss in quality when you scale the images, making Illustrator great for logos, engravings, and other designs where you wish to preserve the quality when changing their scale.

• 

  Editor’s choice for vector art

  Inkscape

  So far, you may have noticed that free-to-use design apps tend to lag behind their paid counterparts in terms of features. However, Inkscape flips that notion on its head with its simple UI, multiple tools, and an array of brushes. It’s also compatible with the big three desktop operating systems, on top of possessing a shorter learning curve than its Adobe counterpart.

  See at Inkscape

• 

  For professional illustrators

  CorelDRAW

  $465 $549 Save $84

  Designed for CAD and vector graphics editing projects, CorelDRAW is better suited for professional graphic designers. For starters, the app has a steep learning curve thanks to its large library of tools that require quite a bit of effort to master. It’s also quite expensive for an application with a subscription model, though you do get amazing AI features and support for the lesser-popular CMYK gamut.

  $465 at CorelDRAW

• 

  For Windows and Mac users

  Affinity Designer

  $35 $70 Save $35

  Another application from Affinity, Designer is the vector-based counterpart to Affinity Photo. Like its sibling, Designer is compatible with both Windows and Mac systems and possesses a large toolkit for all your graphic design needs. Additionally, Affinity Designer supports a variety of add-ons, including brush-packs, texture effects, and shadow overlays, to speed up your workflow.

  $35 at Affinity

Figma is another useful Illustrator alternative that warrants a special shoutout. Since it’s a web application, you shouldn’t really use it for complex projects involving multiple GBs worth of images. But as someone whose photo editing workflow is centered around Figma, I can easily recommend the app to anyone who wants a robust means to lightly touch up vector images.

Best Adobe After Effects alternatives

Featuring high-quality post-processing features, After Effects is Adobe’s all-in-one app for adding motion graphics to your projects. What truly separates After Effects from the other offerings in the Adobe Creative Cloud is that there’s no alternative to AE that can provide all the functionalities of the app. So, if you’re looking for a replacement for After Effects, you’ll need to invest in separate applications for visual effects compositing and motion design. Going with VFX compositing software first,

• 

  Premium pick for VFX artists

  Nuke

  Designed to offer the most comprehensive toolkit for adding visual effects to videos, Nuke is the best alternative to After Effects if you wish to master VFX compositing. The app easily has the best features and effects for those who want to add industry-grade special effects to their videos, though its steep pricing and non-commercial license on the free version make it a little hard to recommend to complete beginners.

  See at Foundry

• 

  Ideal for video editors

  Blackmagic Fusion

  If you’re into video editing, you’ve probably heard about Blackmagic Fusion. Contrary to Adobe Fusion’s layer-based workflow, Blackmagic Fusion is a node-based VFX compositing software that, despite lacking in the number of tools, is much easier to learn and far more accessible than Nuke as it’s integrated into the uber-popular Da Vinci Resolve.

  See at Blackmagic

• 

  Solid VFX tool for beginners

  Natron

  Want a similar UI to Nuke without spending a fortune on the application? Natron has you covered. I’ll admit, Natron is nowhere as powerful or feature-laden as Nuke or even Blackmagic Fusion. That said, it’s a great starting point for beginners who wish to grasp the basics of VFX compositing in a Nuke-like interface.

  See at Github

If creating visual effects isn’t really your thing, then you might want to check out motion graphics tools, which help you combine the design aspects of your projects with typography, animation, and other visually-appealing effects.

• 

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  Solid freemium app

  Cavalry

  Available in both free and paid versions, Cavalry is a fantastic application that specializes in bringing your static designs to life with robust motion graphics facilities. While the premium subscription has its perks, the free variant of Cavalry packs everything from text manipulators to rig control, motion blur, and path/cel animation tools. Heck, it even supports generative art and (rudimentary) compositing provisions.

  See at Cavalry

• 

  Best for Mac users

  Apple Motion

  For those who strictly use Mac systems, and aren’t planning to switch to Windows, then Apple Motion might be the better alternative for you. For starters, it’s designed to offer superior performance on Apple’s proprietary hardware. While the number and types of tools differ between Apple Motion and After Effects, you can replicate most AE graphics filters on Motion without too much hassle, including projects involving 3D graphics.

  $50 at Apple App Store

• 

  Solid web app

  Fable

  If you don’t wish to install additional software on your device, then you’ll find Fable’s web application quite useful for your designs. Besides supporting Figma integrations, Fable can be accessed from any device and provides several pre-created shapes, logos, tiles, and other design tools to help you get started on your next motion design project.

  See at Fable

Best Adobe Premiere Pro alternatives

Source: Adobe

On paper, Adobe Premiere Pro may seem similar to After Effects: both are video editing tools that have plenty of overlapping features. That said, After Effects is better for adding post-processing effects to videos, while Premiere Pro is strictly used for editing clips and videos. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to find robust alternatives that not only go toe-to-toe with Adobe’s premiere (pun intended) offering but also beat handily at certain workloads.

• 

  Overpowered Premiere Pro rival

  DaVinci Resolve

  With a free version that offers everything you’ll ever need to create masterpieces, Da Vinci Resolve is arguably one of the best video editors on the market. Not only does it have better stability and performance, but DaVinci Resolve also knocks Premiere Pro out of the park with its superior color grading provisions. To top it off, this feature-rich app charges a mere $300 for a lifetime license that most people won’t even need to purchase.

  See at Apple Apps (Free)See at Blackmagic

• 

  Amazing for Mac users

  Final Cut Pro

  Another app that walks all over Premiere Pro in many scenarios, Final Cut Pro is an easy recommendation for video editing software if you’re a part of the Apple ecosystem. It’s fairly easy to use and is highly optimized for Apple Silicon chips. Sure, it can take a while to get used to the Magnetic Timeline facility, it’s hard to make the switch to another video editor (even DaVinci Resolve) once you get the hang of Final Cut Pro.

  $300 at Apple Apps

• 

  Good for beginners

  Lightworks

  While I’d still recommend newcomers to start with Davinci Resolve, Lightworks isn’t a bad option if you’re just starting out with video editing and find the former’s UI difficult to navigate. Lightworks may be a bit limited on its own, but you can improve the app’s functionalities by grabbing a handful of effects created by Lightworks’ talented community.

  See at Lightworks

Best Adobe Animate alternatives

True to its name, Adobe Animate lets you bring your 2D drawings and illustrations to life with the power of animation. It’s still one of Adobe’s most popular tools, though in recent times, there has been a major shift in the animation industry, with most of the key players switching from Animate to other tools. Therefore, you’re in luck if you’re looking for more capable tools to replace Adobe Animate for your 2D projects.

• 

  Industry-grade animation app

  Toon Boom Harmony

  Overtly complex UI is a common aspect of software used by professionals, though Toon Boom Harmony avoids this issue with its easy-to-learn interface. Functionality-wise, it’s quite a versatile application that provides enough tools to help you get up to speed with traditional, puppet, cut-out, and multiple other animation techniques for vector images, drawings, and illustrations.

  See at Toon Boom

• 

  Affordable animation package

  OpenToonz

  OpenToonz is a free animation software that’s perfect for newcomers with a limited budget. Sure, it can take some time to get used to the Xsheet interface, but in terms of brush quantity, OpenToonz has Adobe Animate severely beat. It’s also a fantastic tool for traditional frame-by-frame animation, though you might have a hard time dealing with the stability issues that are still prevalent in the app.

  See at OpenToonz

• 

  Perfect for rigging

  Moho

  If you’re an animator who despises the complex rigging process, then Moho is the perfect companion for you! It packs several features that you’ll find in Toon Boom Harmony, though it’s far easier for animation projects that require a lot of rigging. Thanks to the smart bone facility, you can instantly create bendable joints to animate everything from facial expressions to full-body actions.

  $400 at Moho

Best Adobe InDesign alternatives

InDesign is an all-in-one application that combines solid text formatting options with rich image editing tools to let you create high-quality brochures, flyers, and other printable documents. Honestly, I’ve found InDesign to be one of Adobe’s best apps, but there are a couple of notable alternatives worth checking out:

• 

  Closest to InDesign

  Affinity Publisher

  $35 $70 Save $35

  The last of the three apps comprising Affinity’s app suite, Publisher is Affinity’s counterpart to Adobe InDesign. Although Publisher has a lot going for it in terms of cross-OS support, solid collaboration support, and affordable pricing, it does have some glaring issues. Namely, the app doesn’t let you fill or edit PDF files and it has rather limited formatting options for tables, though it’s still great for those looking to transition from InDesign.

  $35 at Affinity

• 

  Free solution

  Scribus

  Scribus is an open-source desktop publishing software that boasts extensive support for most of the popular bitmap file formats, and is compatible with pretty much every PC operating system you can think of. I’ll admit, its UI is a bit on the clunkier side, though the app itself is easy to learn and can be used to edit and create visually impressive documents without costing you an arm and a leg.

  See at Scribus

• 

  For Microsoft 365 lovers

  Microsoft Publisher

  Love it or hate it, you’ll have to agree that Microsoft’s 365 suite has a host of productivity-oriented applications. One of these is Microsoft Publisher, an app that combines advanced graphics design and layout-based formatting options with the text-editing capabilities of the beloved MS Word. That said, it’s still not quite as feature-driven as Adobe’s offering.

  $160 at Microsoft

Adobe app suite: To subscribe or not to subscribe

Despite Adobe’s anti-consumer antics, there’s a solid reason why the company’s products are still broadly used. And that’s because we still don’t have many applications that can rival Adobe’s offerings, let alone surpass them. Sure, DaVinci Resolve is a handy alternative to Premiere Pro and Toon Boom Harmony has beaten Adobe Animate at its own game, but they’re just two separate tools compared to the Adobe Creative Cloud’s multitude of apps.

Then there’s the fact that Adobe After Effects and InDesign are still the best apps in their sector. Heck, I’d go so far as to claim that After Effects is so incredible that the application alone is worth spending money on the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

But if you’re looking for some all-in-one applications that combine the functionalities of multiple tools, then we have three more options on this list.

• 

  Great for 3D projects

  Blender

  Those active in the 3D (and even 2D) space must have heard about Blender. Arguably one of the best open-source applications for anything remotely related to 3D, you can try using Blender as a free alternative to After Effects for motion graphics projects. Not to mention, the Grease Pencil utility of Blender lets you use this powerful app for 2D animations.

  See at Blender

• 

  Vector + Raster support

  Clip Studio Paint

  Although both Photoshop and Illustrator support vector and raster image processing to some extent, it’s better to use them separately with their specific niche. Fortunately, Clip Studio Paint is a neat tool that lets you work on both types of images, making it the better choice if you don’t wish to change applications every time you have to switch between vector and raster illustrations and artwork.

  $54 at Clip Studio

• 

  Quite similar to After Effects

  Autograph

  Let me preface this choice by stating that Left Angle’s Autograph can’t compete with After Effects’ multi-faceted nature. However, for an app that came out in 2023, Autograph has made a lot of progress on the features front and can serve as a nice alternative if you want a similar all-rounder application that can handle both VFX compositing and motion graphics tasks.

  See at Left Angle