If you’re quite ready to pony up the $60 a month it takes to access Adobe’s Creative Cloud All Apps bundle, there are plenty of low-cost and no-cost alternatives out there. Here are our favorites.
If you’re quite ready to pony up the $60 a month it takes to access Adobe’s Creative Cloud All Apps bundle, there are plenty of low-cost and no-cost alternatives out there. Here are our favorites.
Adobe products are industry standard, and, for many people, nothing else will do. I get it.
This is complicated somewhat, by the recent Adobe terms of service. Go catch up on that if you weren’t aware.
While I know that there are a plethora of alternatives to Photoshop available, I’ve also been using Photoshop since I was fourteen, which means I’ve got two more decades of experience with it. Photoshop is muscle memory for me, and that convenience is worth quite a bit.
Regardless, you should be aware of the alternatives, particularly since Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription is unaffordable for many people.
Currently, if you want to use Adobe Photoshop, you can get away with paying as little as $20 a month for Photoshop and Lightroom via Adobe’s photographer bundle. But if you need access to multiple Adobe apps, you’ll need to pay for the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps bundle, which clocks in at $59.99 per month — before taxes. That can be pretty hard to justify if you just need occasional access to something like Illustrator.
So, if you need creative software and are not beholden to Adobe for one reason or another, here are my top picks.
Adobe Photoshop Alternatives
Adobe is arguably Adobe’s most well-known product, so much so that it has altered our vocabulary — and for good reason. Photoshop pretty much sets the standard when it comes to raster-based image editing.
But, while it sets the standard, it’s not the only image editor out there, and it’s always worth looking at what else is available.
Affinity Photo is my personal favorite Photoshop competitor and my go-to recommendation for anyone looking to get out of the Adobe ecosystem.
It features all your favorite tools in a familiar interface that is easy to pick up. Sure, there will be some adjustment time, but YouTube is full of friendly faces who are willing to teach you how to make the switch.
Affinity Photo costs $69.99 for a one-time payment for the desktop version, $18.49 for the standalone iPad version, or you can pay $164.99 to get the Affinity V2 universal license, which gives you all three Affinity products — Designer, Photo, and Publisher — across macOS, iPadOS, and Windows.
I would be doing everyone a great disservice if I didn’t mention the OG Photoshop alternative — GIMP. GIMP has been around since 1995 and has been a favorite of open-source advocates since its inception.
While I’m not the biggest fan of the interface, it’s hard to argue with the whole free thing. Not to mention, like nearly every other piece of art and design software out there, you can use YouTube to help you figure out how to use it.
Adobe Illustrator Alternatives
While Photoshop might be Adobe’s most famous app, there’s an argument to be made that Illustrator is Adobe’s most useful app. When it comes to designing graphics for responsive websites or imagery for print, you will need something that can create vector images. For many people, that something is Illustrator — but plenty of alternatives exist.
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USA — IT The best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more