Jumping into the full suite of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps is an expensive proposition: a $53/month setback (as of this writing) that might be overkill for your needs unless you’re producing a lot of media across a variety of formats.
You can go piecemeal, of course, but you’ll still be paying quite a bit more than your typical monthly music subscription to edit photos/videos/audio/print pages/etc. And then there are the cancellation fees, which might come as an unanticipated shock if you’re trying to get out of an annual plan early.
Not to hate on Adobe, but if you’re looking for alternatives that cost less, cost nothing, or simply aren’t as bulky to work with as some of Adobe’s apps, I’ve got you covered. While nothing beats Photoshop, for example, there are plenty of cheaptools out there you can use to accomplish much of what the app lets you do. Dare I say it, these “lesser” apps might even be a better fit, as you don’t really need the tank of graphics-editing apps if you’re just doing a little cropping and color-correction from time to time.
I’ll be highlighting a bunch of alternative Adobe apps in this guide, but if you’re impatient, here’s the full list:
- Affinity Photo [Adobe Photoshop]
- Photopea / SumoPaint [Adobe Photoshop]
- GIMP / Glimpse Image Editor [Adobe Photoshop]
- Krita [Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop]
- Inkscape [Adobe Illustrator]
- Scribus [Adobe InDesign]
- RawTherapee / Darktable [Adobe Lightroom]
- PDF-XChange Editor [Adobe Acrobat]
- DaVinci Resolve [Adobe Premiere]
- Audacity [Adobe Audition]
