Courtesy to Twitter user XdanielArt (date of publication: 8 June 2024)
Affinity Designer 2 might be the only one close to what Adobr Illustrator can handle.
List of Alternatives to Adobe Programs
Submitted 11 months ago by Novocirab@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/4df35bfc-dfd0-409b-9544-4c2e61bf298e.jpeg
Comments
PeterisBacon@lemm.ee 11 months ago
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
GIMP is unfortunately not a good competitor, the UX/UI is atrocious, and that’s after spending 25 years using it now… I switched to Krita for most things at this point. GIMP needs some sort of revamp.
InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Seriously, gimp is barely usable for anything, they need to put the damn thing our of our misery.
And it spawned gtk, which is yet another monument to software masochism.
Will give krita a shot, this shouldn’t be that hard.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
TangledHyphae@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I see two new features that look fantastic, but the rest of the UI seems likely unchanged. I’ll definitely give it a shot though.
peteyestee@feddit.org 11 months ago
Adobe… Fucks people hard.
m3t00@lemmy.world 11 months ago
text
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Wish there was a good FOSS Acrobat/Blue beam alternative.
I use those tools for the majority of my work as an engineer.
jenny_ball@lemmy.world 11 months ago
bluebeam is great
Jocarnail@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I hate that there is not a good alternative to InDesign that works on linux.
If only the Affinity suit were to work on linux, even just with wine, I would be alright with the fact that it still is proprietary software. It was somehow able to replace my whole Ph/Ai/Id workflow but it is till keeping me from trying to switch to the penguin.
Smoogs@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Ive been using Sumatra for pdfs. It’s open source too.
clot27@lemm.ee 11 months ago
is the image not loading only for me?
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It loads for me on voyager, but is unreadable.
dirtySourdough@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Libre Office Draw is another Ai alternative
couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Shout out to pdfgear.
Does almost all the pdf file manipulation anyone needs and it’s free.
ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Affinity + BMD’s Davinci Resolve FTW. Best combo IMOO. I did the switch back in 2017 and never looked back. Worth the single low price and long term free upgrades. For acrobat replacement (basics only) Apple’s preview is flawless and Ubuntu 25.10 Pages looks promising. Looking for recommendations for Lightroom replacement. Apple’s pixelmator purchase looks promising but I don’t want subscription.
barsoap@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Countering Animator with Blender, that’s brutal. For at least some stuff Blender is also the better Illustrator.
DimFisher@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Thank you very much for this, I already use four programs out of those, time look into more 😉
Rhusta@midwest.social 11 months ago
Does anybody have a similar list of alternatives but for the Autodesk Suite/Ecosystem? Some open source CAD and BIM programs, some FOSS modeling and rendering programs?
bluewing@lemm.ee 11 months ago
If you are looking for FOSS CAD, then FreeCAD 1.0 is about the only game in town. SolveSpace is fine for fairly simple uses but lacks all the advanced toys one might like. Nor has it been updated in 3 years now. Siemans SolidEdge has a free community edition, but it’s Widows only. OnShape is is a popular alternative to Fusion, and is fully cloud based, but it is restricted like Fusion.
As an acolyte that wears the sackcloth and ashes of FreeCAD, there is a growing community of tutorials, (I highly recommend MangoJelly on youtube) for beginners to learn with. But the learning curve can be steep as you get past the basics. There is a FreeCAD community here, but it’s small and not very active. Sadly the best place for answers remains on reddit.
Jezza@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’ve spent the better half of six months trying to answer this question. (not continuously, just passively)
For some background, I used fusion 360 for a number of years, so I witnessed it turn to absolute shit, but that means parametric CADs are my cup of tea.
Here’s my thoughts.
FreeCAD: I tried this, but I’ll admit I gave up quickly.
It doesn’t feel like a complete solution. It feels like more and more tools have been tacked on without the realisation that people who haven’t been using it for years are going to have even less of an idea of where to start.
I do want to come back and give it another shot, as it hit 1.0 recently.Plasticity:
I was originally interested in it because if how easy it could be to model something. After having used it for a number of days, I agree that it’s relatively intuitive to get something going, but it lacks the precise feeling of a parametric CAD. Don’t get me wrong, you can be precise with it, but it feels something akin to a 3D paint and less like a CAD program.
I can imagine if you just want to do something small, it would be sufficient.OpenSCAD: I’ve been a programmer for 15+ years, and I expected to like this.
Sadly, if you lack a strong maths background, you’ll find this difficult to master.
I’ll be the first to admit my maths isn’t as great as it used to be.
The beauty of a parametric CAD is that I don’t need to know how to position everything exactly, I can just give it the constraints and it manages it for me.
With this, it felt like I kept on testing a value, measuring the resulting dimension that I was trying to go for, tweaking it again, rise and repeat.
Didn’t feel like I was programming, it felt like I was writing the 3D model itself with a DSL.
The lack of fillets and chamfers was also frustrating.And this brings me to my current recommendation:
SolveSpace:
I’ve been using it for about a month now, and I’ve been happy with it.
It didn’t take much to understand what it’s trying to do.
It’s completely parametric and I felt at home pretty quickly.
You can do fillets and chamfers easily, it just requires a bit of creative work.Let me know if you have any other questions.
I’d be happy to answer them.beastlykings@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the 1.0 of freecad.
I don’t use CAD professionally, and even my hobby usage is less than it was, and it was only a dozen or two small projects.
I had never used freecad, always fusion 360. I’ve been away for awhile, and also switched to Linux in the meantime. I needed to make a simple object, and tried freecad 1.0, and I literally could not intuit how to begin. Not a single shape, I was so lost, it was very frustrating.
I tried onshape and got a bit further, but still don’t like the corporate nature of it.
I’m not trying to slam freecad, I really want it to work, and when I have more time to sit down and study it, I want to try again. But in the meantime I went back to fusion 360 in a VM, which was very sluggish, but at least I knew where everything was.
p0q@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Penpot?
FireWire400@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Another great alternative to Acrobat is Okular; it’s free, open source and runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.
It’s been my go-to PDF reader since switching to Linux since it already came pre-installed with Manjaro KDE.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 11 months ago
i mean eveb masterpdf editor paid would help to not support adobe. this list should not be an image but a wiki. bitwig i also expected to see.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 11 months ago
Or if you have to use Adobe products, at least have the decency not to pay for them.
j0ester@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Maybe it’s to only spy on Sony. They love pirating Adobe products; and hate when others pirate their stuff.
gamer@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Without the title of this post, it’s probably easy for any non tech person to misunderstand this image as being a list of Adobe programs that spy on you, at least on first glance.
OmgItBurns@discuss.online 11 months ago
Dreamweaver is still used? I used it a bit back in the day when Macromedia was around and shortly after Adobe got a hold of it. How does it work with the modern web? Does it work well with modern programming languages or is it still just a WYSIWYG HTML editor?
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 11 months ago
I used it briefly in a class around 2015ish. It worked about as well as any Adobe software does, but honestly it was really difficult to use and quite frankly it probably would take just as long to learn the HTML and CSS skills necessary to make a decent website as it would to learn how to make one in Dreamweaver
russjr08@bitforged.space 11 months ago
I am surprised that its actually still a product they sell and seemingly update. Looking on their product page, wow it has git support - it can be yours for $22.99/month too!
(That will also require you to give your soul to them too, via a contract signed in blood)
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Holy shit $23/mo and they won’t even host the website for you?
floofloof@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Adobe’s prices are outrageous.
Corno@lemm.ee 11 months ago
So happy to see my beloved Paint Tool Sai on here! 😃
skooma_king@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Are there any good alternatives as far as PDF creation goes? Creating fillable forms, not just editing? I have some users I can’t shake from Acrobat Pro.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why isn’t Okular on the list? Way better PDF reader than Acrobat.
huppakee@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Acrobat is Adobe’s pdf editor and the listed alternatives are pdf editor, which isn’t the same as a pdf reader.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sorry, I didn’t know Acrobat is a PDF editor. I don’t think I’ve ever had to edit a PDF in my life.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Draw from LO is pretty meh for a lot of things, but I use it a lot to edit pdfs, and it is very consistent
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What the actual fuck is adobe acrobat? A pdf viewer with subscription model payment? Firefox, the browser, can edit pdf files. It’s 2025.
kandoh@reddthat.com 11 months ago
In Acrobat I can go into print preview and see what my file will print like using only black and a spot color ink, I can auto-convert RGB images to CMYK, and it has a pretty robust set of accessibility features so the visually impaired can read it.
It’s for professionals.
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Firefox can do basic annotating, adding text and adding pictures but it can’t make a new PDF from scratch.
You may be confusing Adobe Acrobat Reader with Adobe Acrobat? Full Acrobat is the proprietary tool to make a PDF file from scratch including some of the more complex functions.
PDF is an open standard and has been for a while, so there are now plenty of alternatives for most of the functions. LibreOffice Draw and Inkscape can do a lot of PDF creation functions but not all. Lots of “print to PDF” options to create basic PDF documents too.
However some of the more niche functions are not widely supported or well supported; and there isn’t really any opensource dedicated PDF maker that I’m aware of. Layout tools are abundant but I think it’s things like building forms and document signing that is less easily replicated. There is Master PDF - a fully functional PDF maker which is proprietary and available for Linux; it $80 for a perpetual license. I’m not aware of any other alternatives myself.
Thrashy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
In AEC work we’ve moved almost exclusively to a competing PDF tool called Blubeam, which is proprietary but very worth the price, with tools for scaling, dimensioning, and producing material takeoffs from PDF drawings. Much of what you’d use Acrobat for in a more typical office environment are absent or limited, though.
Jyek@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Adobe acrobat is THE PDF editor. PDF is a proprietary format created and developed by Adobe. Any software that can edit PDFs is doing so in a format they do not have any control over. And there just aren’t any proper PDF editors that are feature complete. now if you’re an individual who needs to make a PDF in the privacy of your own home, by all means, use a cheap or free or FOSS application to do so. But if you need that PDF to be readable and useable and seamlessly compatible on other computers for other users for ever? Better pay the Adobe tax because there is a good chance, it won’t look the way you expect it to when someone opens it up in Adobe which their company definitely has.
Smoogs@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How does Sumatra fall into all of this? It’s an open source version
yournamehere@lemm.ee 11 months ago
not true. dont oay adobe so more pdfs will look like the user intended. dont fall adobe scams like weird functions that should be in a pdf anyways. pdfs created with masterpdfeditor look exactly as intended. so, again: no, adobe is a scam. always has been.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Building off of this, the PDF standard supports all sorts of craziness. It can have embedded math and logic similar to excel files, to the point there’s templates available for banks which will automatically calculate entire loans (including weird ones like balloon mortgages and variable interest rate stuff) without leaving Adobe Reader, and the recent Doom PDF and Linux PDF projects exploit the fact that pdfs support embedded javascript.
There’s also an actual market for enterprise PDF templates like the banking ones I described with automatic calculations and whatnot. So some people literally make their living selling PDFs to businesses that businesses actually use
Bouzou@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t know how it stacks up price-wise, but I’d argue Bluebeam is a far superior PDF editing program. It even covers some word processing, Illustrator, and some PowerPoint adjacent things.
That being said, I can’t see it as practical for the average consumer.
BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’m not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn’t with layout and reproducibility - a good PDF maker and a good reader will give you an accurate representation of how it looks on all devices.
There isn’t a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job. But they’re not dedicated PDF makers and the real problem is building fillable forms and signatures.
But there is a proprietary alternative called Master PDF that is a dedicated and supports all the PDF standard features I believe; one perpetual license is $80 compared to Adobe subscription based charging. I’m not aware of other options myself but they may exist.
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are a few other PDF editors that are cheaper, but they don’t have the same features. PDF seems like something that has outlived its purpose. There has to be other document formats that provide a similar or better experience and prevents alteration.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
it won’t look the way you expect it to when someone opens it up in Adobe which their company definitely has.
That sounds like a problem between them and Adobe tbh
phantomwise@lemmy.ml 11 months ago
I have no clue what most of these abbreviations refer to 😅
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 11 months ago
I have no idea what any of those things really does and it’s way too much to learn given how much GIMP and Krita do
Siegfried@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Krita os not just good, I think the meta points it as the best drawing software in the market*
TheFonz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s unreal how good Krita is. The small team behind it has accomplished something amazing.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
I don’t know what those two letters mean. I wish they had written out the name. I’ve avoided buying Adobe stuff because it’s stupidly expensive, but I’m still aware that in some industries, some of these have been industry standards at one point or another. Being able to tell wtf their names are, or even what they do would be helpful.
huppakee@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Some are easy, I’ll share the ones I know
Ps = Photoshop
Id = InDesign
Pr = Premiere
Ae = After Effects
Dw = DreamweaverI don’t know what Xd stands for, because everyone just calls is Xd but it is UI/UX design like figma and sketch. Ai is confusing but they use it for (Adobe) Illustrator, possible they thought
Ilwould be more confusing
Baguette@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Neat list, but imo photoshop is closer to being called a photomanipulation/image editor than photography. lightroom is the more dedicated photography software.
Also I wouldn’t call paint.net an alternative to photoshop. I love paint.net but its a relatively simple image editor and its functionally limited even with plugins.
Bouzou@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yes, that was my first question: what about Photoshop as an image editor? What is a comparable replacement for that?
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 11 months ago
GIMP has been the photoshop alternative for many years now. It stands for gnu image manipulation program, and it is an image editor. The category is named a bit weird but the program listed is the right one.
thespicyguy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
The wave of GenP refugees today appreciate this post.