Adobe offers industry-leading tools like Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and many more. But, it comes with a Creative Cloud Package which is quite expensive. Many companies are coming forward with powerful Adobe alternatives to Photoshop and InDesign. Most of them are free of cost.
To get you started, here we are discussing the best free Adobe Alternatives to replace Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and more for both PC and Mac.
1. Adobe Photoshop Alternatives
Adobe Photoshop is the most popular image editing and graphics editing tool. You must be already familiar with Photoshop, but it is quite expensive. If you are new to photo editing and would love to work on some tools that work like Photoshop, here are some free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop.
GIMP
The Adobe free alternative provides tools needed for image manipulation. It also helps artists to transform images into unique creations. GIMP is also used for creating icons and other graphical design elements.
Key Features: High-quality photo manipulation | Original Artwork Creation | Graphic design elements | Multi-language support | Flexibility
Download GIMP: Windows | Mac (Free)
Pixlr
You can edit your photos and create great designs from your browser for free using Pixlr. The Adobe Photoshop alternative will give you next-level experience in photo editing and graphical design. It supports most of the image formats like PSD, PXD, JPEG, PNG, and many more.
Also, use your professionally crafted templates to create stunning YouTube thumbnails, Instagram stories, and Facebook posts. With this, you can also design PowerPoint, resume, brochure, business card, and many more. The Adobe alternative also helps you create photo collages for free with its built-in pre-made collage templates.
Key Features: Design templates | Picture collage maker | Remove Background | Filters & effects
Get Pixlr: Pixlr.com (Freemium)
Related: 12 Windows Software Alternatives for Linux: Adobe Photoshop, MS Office and More
2. Adobe Illustrator Alternatives
Adobe Illustrator is still the industry standard when it comes to digital art, illustration, and graphic designing. However, the software is quite expensive. There are quite a few Adobe alternatives, out of which, we discuss Inkscape and Boxy SVG.
Inkscape
If you are an illustrator or a web designer or anyone who aspires to create vector imagery, you can use Inkscape for that. The Adobe alternative is a free and open-source vector graphics editor. You can use software to create vector images. You can also import and export other formats.
The Adobe Illustrator free alternative can render primitive vector shapes like rectangles and ellipses. Moreover, you can fill these objects with colors, patterns, and color gradients. After creating the shapes, you can further manipulate them with effects like moving, rotating, scaling, and skewing.
Key Features: Flexible drawing tool | Powerful text tool | Transformation effects | Primitive vector shapes | Color gradients
Download Inkscape: Windows | Mac (Free)
Boxy SVG
Boxy SVG has a simple user interface. There is no crowded workspace and your illustration will visible right at the center. You can do most of the action in the canvas itself, be it editing of shapes or adjustment of gradient fills. You can use keyboard shortcuts with which many features are accessible.
You can customize it as per you like. Also, you get good control over the changes which is available in panels that can be expanded or collapsed quickly. Besides, in the Adobe Illustrator alternative, you can export SVG files to PDF. Also, you can sync your app preferences between devices.
Key Features: Use as web app | Install & use offline | Save SVG files to disk| Export SVG files to PDF | Sync app between devices
Download Boxy SVG: Boxy-SVG.com (Free)
Related: 10 Best Procreate Alternatives for Android Users
3. Adobe XD Alternatives
With Adobe XD, you are able to create stunning designs. The software will help you to add interactions, transitions, animation, and many other effects. Since the tool has many rich features and capabilities, it is not an easy task to find alternatives to Adobe XD. We have hand-selected two of the free Adobe alternatives which can be used for designing and prototyping.
Figma
You can collaborate with your team and start designing better products from start to finish. Figma is an Adobe XD free alternative which is packed with design features.
Figma has a similar interface and drawing tools as Adobe XD or Sketch. Gather feedbacks with animations and dynamic overlays and bring your design to life. There are shared styles, libraries, and reusable components in the adobe alternative.
Key Features: Prototyping | Developer handoff | Version control | Live share
Get Figma: Figma.com (Free)
InVision Studio
InVision Studio is a prototyping and animation tool. It will help you create advanced, vector-based screen designs. The layout of this Adobe XD free alternative is intuitive and easy to use.
The web app combines design, prototyping, and collaboration into one. It is a UX and digital design desktop application that lets you design apps, and several other digital products.
Key Features: Faster creation | Responsive & adaptive layout | Speedy prototyping | Friction-free animation | Incredible collaboration
Get InVision Studio: Invisionapp.com (Freemium)
Related: 5 Best Design Collaboration Tools for UI/UX Designers in 2021
4. Adobe After Effects Alternatives
Adobe After Effects does a lot of different things like editing, composing, and adding VFX. There are quite a few alternatives to After Effects that are free and will give you almost similar fuctionalities.
Blackmagic Fusion
Fusion is an advanced compositing software for visual effects artists, and broadcast. Over thousand Hollywood movies have used Fusion. The After Effects alternative has a node-based VFX creation interface.
Blackmagic Fusion brings to you a massive range of tools, VR, and 3D support. It also has GPU accelerated performance. Besides, you also get unlimited network rendering in the tool. You get almost all the tools for creating broadcast graphics and dramatic titles.
Key Features: Build your own effects | Sync audio animations | Custom vector shapes | Retime animations
Download Blackmagic Fusion: Windows | Mac (Freemium)
Blender
Blender lets you do anything After Effects can do and even more including modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, and many more. It offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering. Some of them are real-time viewport preview and CPU & GPU rendering.
Blender has full N-Gon support, edge slide, inset, grid, and bridge fill. It also has advanced sculpting tools and brushes. Besides, the Adobe free alternative also enables you to do 3D painting with textured brushes and masking.
Key Features: 3D modeling | UV unwrapping | Texturing | Editing | Fluid & smoke simulation
Download Blender: Windows | Mac (Free)
Related: Do I need 8GB or 16GB RAM MacBook Pro?
5. Adobe InDesign Alternatives
With Adobe InDesign, you can create page layouts, paste-ups with careful measurement. If you are one who is interested in designing apps, Adobe InDesign will help you design the user interface and other layout designs of your app. But, the software is quite expensive, and there are InDesign alternatives that will help you get the job done.
Canva
With Canva, you can create custom templates and design with a team. You can also share it and also print it professionally. It has over seventy-five premium stock photos, videos, and graphics. Canva offers 100GB of storage as well. You will get tons of templates for social media posts, presentations, letters, and more.
There are also over 420,000 free templates that come with new designs daily. By clicking the background remover, you can also remove the background easily. With Magic Resize, you can also resize designs. Also, you can also save designs as templates for your team to use.
Key Features: Teams | Photo effects | Image cropper | Frames | Add text to photo
Get Canva: Canva.com (Freemium)
Pixelied
Pixelied is a free toolkit with which you can retouch product images. You can also use the app to replace backgrounds, and create branded designs for social media, blog posts, and other content.
The Adobe InDesign alternative also has a library of professional templates with ready-made thumbnails, header images, story, and post graphics. Pixelied will be really useful for creating a brand for your marketing channels.
Key Features: Design editing tools | Background remover | Invite & collaborate | Multiple brand workspace
Get Pixelied: Pixelied.com (Freemium)
Related: 8 Best Online Banner Maker Websites for Brand Building
6. Adobe Lightroom Alternatives
In order to edit raw photos which you capture using your camera, you can use Adobe Lightroom. With the software, you can sharpen the blurred images, add saturation, and thereby increase the clarity of your photos. Without paying for the Lightroom, you can do similar edits in many other free lightroom alternatives.
Darktable
Darktable is an open-source RAW editor and developer for photographers. The software will manage the negatives of captured images in a database.
Darktable never modifies the original image. It has a professional color management to ensure fidelity all the way to print. Also, you can use GPU accelerated processing to speed up your workflow using your video card.
Key Features: Background remover | Product mockups | Invite & collaborate| Professional color management
Download Darktable: Windows | Mac (Free)
RAW Therapee
Raw Therapee is a cross-platform raw photo processing system. The Adobe free alternative is designed for developing raw files from digital cameras.
You can develop high quality images as it has 32-bit processing engine, advanced color, and detailed editing. With the RAW Therapee tool you can work with multiple RAW images to edit them in a quicker way.
Key Features: High image quality | Non-destructive editing | Advanced color | Ghost masking | 32-bit processing engine
Download RAW Therapee: Windows | Mac (Free)
Related: 10 Best RAW Image Editing Apps for Android
7. Adobe Premiere Pro Alternatives
Premiere Pro is an advanced tool for video editing. You can edit footage in any format using Premiere Pro. If the Premiere Pro’s price tag is not affordable for you, check out some stunning premiere pro alternatives below.
Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve combines editing, color correction, visual effects, and motion graphics. You can do the audio post-production along with the video footage in DaVinci Resolve. It has a simple and modern user interface.
If you are using this software, you don’t have to switch between multiple software to do different tasks. Also, many of the advanced tools and features are absolutely free to use with Resolve.
Key Features: HDR grading tools | Redesigned primary color controls | Al-based magic mask | Next generation Fairlight audio engine
Download DaVinci Resolve: Windows | Mac (Freemium)
Hitfilm Express
Hitfilm Express is a free video editing software with professional motion graphics and effects tools. You can use this software to create amazing content, films, or gaming videos.
Hitfilm Express is perfect for beginners, film students, and YouTubers. It has a built-in voice recorder and over 410 effects and presets. You also get access to unlimited tracks and transitions.
Key Features: Advanced tracking | Screen simulation | Footage distortions | Muzzle flash effects | Lighting effects
Download Hitfilm Express: Windows | Mac (Freemium)
Related: 15 Best Free Video Editors for YouTube Video Making
8. Adobe Spark Alternatives
Adobe Spark is a web-based tool to create designs, social media posts, web pages, and edit videos. But, people look for a better Adobe alternative to meet their basic needs at cheaper costs, and here are some of them.
Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer gives you power to create engaging HTML content. You can use animation and interactive elements in this Adobe alternative software. With this, you can bring your creative vision to life.
Also, Google Web Designer has a seamless integration with other Google products like Google Drive, Display & Video 360. You can create multiple pages to include multiple scenes within a project.
Key Features: Animation and 3D transformations | Add multiple pages to content | Integration with Google products
Download Google Web Designer: Windows | Mac (Free)
Easel.ly
You can use Easelly to spice up your presentation. Also, you get to collaborate with people and they can share your content.
With Easel.ly, you can help your customers understand your product. Also, make your resume in a perfect design and layout using this Adobe free alternative so that your hiring managers can’t ignore.
Key Features: Infographic creation | Objects | Dynamic charts | Image file formats | Text menu | Grid view
Get Easel.ly: Easel.ly (Freemium)
Related: 10 Best iPhone Photo Editing Apps
9. Adobe Dreamweaver Alternatives
Dreamweaver is an IDE or coding application whether you are a beginner or a professional programmer. If your studies or job includes coding, here are the best fee Adobe Dreamweaver alternatives you can use.
Atom
Atom lets you write in most languages and enhance its capabilities by adding new libraries and apps. Fo each new programming language yu want to try, simply install its module and compile quickly.
Atom has a smart autocompletion feature that will help you write codes faster. It also has a file system browser from which you can browse and open a single file in one window. To compare and edit code across files, you can split your atom interface into multiple panes.
Key Features: Cross-platform| Package manager | Autocompletion | File system browser
Download Atom: Windows | Mac (Free)
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is an easy-to-use code editor for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Sublime Text for Mac now comes with a native support for Apple M1 Macs as well.
You can make use of the split views of the file tabs, with support throughout the interface. Sublime Text also has autocompletion of codes which will make your jobs easier.
Key Features: Auto-completion | Quickly insert text | Select multiple lines
Download Sublime Text: Windows | Mac (Free)
10. Adobe Media Encoder Alternatives
Adobe Media Encoder is mainly used for converting between file formats. You can convert Blu-ray, DVD, MP4, and many other file formats to any other formats of your choice. There are many alternative software for Adobe Media Encoder which are totally free to use.
Handbrake
HandBrake is a free video encoding tool for everyone. You can convert one file format to any selection of widely supported codecs. It is a free and open-source video converter for PC and Mac.
You can use HandBrake to convert or encode videos for free. It is mainly used for post-production purposes.
Key Features: File containers | Video encoders | Audio encoders | Audio pass-thru
Download Handbrake: Windows | Mac (Free)
XMedia Recode
XMedia is an all-in-one video converter, audio converter, and audio editor. You can convert files nearly in any format and support any device you own.
With this Adobe alternative, you can do the basic editing like cutting, adding video filters like color correction, rotating, and cropping. You can also apply effects like fade in/out, delogo, and add subtitles before encoding the videos.
Key Features: Online video reduce | Openly selectable color | Various gadgets | Quick stream
Download XMedia Recode: Windows | Mac (Free)
Related: 10 Best Video Converters for Mac Users
Adobe Creating Cloud is indeed a well-packed suite of tools you need in any aspect of your career or business. But most of them are very costly for startups and small-scale businesses. Wit our above list of the best adobe alternatives, we hope you managed to find the best suiting tool for each of your needs which you thought was only possible with Adobe.