Every few months someone asks the same question:
“Is there actually a good alternative to Adobe stuff?”
Usually the answer online is either:
“Just use GIMP bro”
or “nothing comes close”
Reality is somewhere in the middle.
Adobe is still hard to beat if your whole workflow depends on tight integration between apps, shared project structures, agencies using the same pipelines, and years of muscle memory.
I found this massive community-maintained repository collecting alternatives for basically every Adobe app:
Adobe Alternatives List
It’s honestly one of the best references I’ve seen because it doesn’t pretend everything is a “Photoshop killer.” It just shows what tools are good at what-
Some stuff I think is genuinely worth checking out:
Photoshop alternatives
Krita — legitimately great for painting and illustration
Photopea — absurdly useful browser-based editor
Affinity Photo — probably the closest thing to a professional Photoshop replacement
GIMP — still rough around the edges, but improving constantly - check https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
Illustrator alternatives
Inkscape — honestly very solid nowadays
Graphite — really interesting newer project
Affinity Designer — probably the easiest transition for Illustrator users
Premiere / video editing
DaVinci Resolve — at this point it’s not even “an alternative,” it’s just industry-standard software
Kdenlive — surprisingly capable open-source editor
Shotcut — lightweight and practical
After Effects / motion graphics
This is still one of the hardest Adobe apps to fully replace.
But:
Blender keeps getting better for motion work
Cavalry is extremely interesting for procedural motion graphics
Natron exists if you lean more into compositing/VFX
Lightroom alternatives
Darktable
RawTherapee
Capture One
Capture One especially is used professionally all over the place.
XD / UI design
Adobe basically lost this battle already.
Figma
Penpot
Framer
Especially if your work is more experimental, indie, motion-heavy, illustration-focused, or pipeline-flexible rather than giant agency production work.
And honestly? Some newer tools feel less bloated than Adobe apps at this point.
The original repo is here if you want to dig through everything yourself:
KenneyNL Adobe Alternatives Repository
Also shoutout to Kenney.nl for maintaining a ton of genuinely useful free resources for creatives and game devs
“Is there actually a good alternative to Adobe stuff?”
Usually the answer online is either:
“Just use GIMP bro”
or “nothing comes close”
Reality is somewhere in the middle.
Adobe is still hard to beat if your whole workflow depends on tight integration between apps, shared project structures, agencies using the same pipelines, and years of muscle memory.
I found this massive community-maintained repository collecting alternatives for basically every Adobe app:
Adobe Alternatives List
It’s honestly one of the best references I’ve seen because it doesn’t pretend everything is a “Photoshop killer.” It just shows what tools are good at what-
Some stuff I think is genuinely worth checking out:
Photoshop alternatives
Krita — legitimately great for painting and illustration
Photopea — absurdly useful browser-based editor
Affinity Photo — probably the closest thing to a professional Photoshop replacement
GIMP — still rough around the edges, but improving constantly - check https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
Illustrator alternatives
Inkscape — honestly very solid nowadays
Graphite — really interesting newer project
Affinity Designer — probably the easiest transition for Illustrator users
Premiere / video editing
DaVinci Resolve — at this point it’s not even “an alternative,” it’s just industry-standard software
Kdenlive — surprisingly capable open-source editor
Shotcut — lightweight and practical
After Effects / motion graphics
This is still one of the hardest Adobe apps to fully replace.
But:
Blender keeps getting better for motion work
Cavalry is extremely interesting for procedural motion graphics
Natron exists if you lean more into compositing/VFX
Lightroom alternatives
Darktable
RawTherapee
Capture One
Capture One especially is used professionally all over the place.
XD / UI design
Adobe basically lost this battle already.
Figma
Penpot
Framer
Especially if your work is more experimental, indie, motion-heavy, illustration-focused, or pipeline-flexible rather than giant agency production work.
And honestly? Some newer tools feel less bloated than Adobe apps at this point.
The original repo is here if you want to dig through everything yourself:
KenneyNL Adobe Alternatives Repository
Also shoutout to Kenney.nl for maintaining a ton of genuinely useful free resources for creatives and game devs