The Best Adobe Alternatives For 2024 (Free Software TIER LIST)

Which Adobe alternatives are considered "S" tier - or the best of the best? Which are worth downloading and trying out? Which should you stay away from? In this video, I explore the most popular Adobe alternatives and rank them in a tier list on a scale of "S" to "D."

Software covered in this video include Canva, Affinity Photo, Blender, WordPress, GIMP, Darktable, Inkscape, Drupal, Davinci Resolve, Krita, PenPot, and Scribus. These creative apps perform a wide range of functions - from Content Management Systems for web design, to graphic design, to photo editing and photo manipulation, to video editing, to UI/UX design and prototyping, to 3D animation, and to digital painting.

With this guide, you can finally figure out which creative apps are right for you in 2023 when you want to move away from Adobe. Replace Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Adobe Experience Manager, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and more!

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0:00 - Intro & Resources
0:11 - WordPress CMS
0:58 - GIMP Photo Editor
2:07 - Blender 3D Software
3:35 - Darktable RAW Processor
4:24 - Scribus Desktop Publisher
4:54 - Krita Digital Painting
5:47 - PenPot UX/UI Prototyping
6:52 - DaVinci Resolve Video Editor
7:44 - Drupal CMS
8:23 - Inkscape Scalable Vector Graphics
09:48 - Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher
11:33 - Canva Browser Content Creation App
12:27 - Final Thoughts

WordPress:
GIMP:
Blender:
Darktable:
Scribus:
Krita:
PenPot:
Davinci Resolve:
Drupal:
Inkscape:
Affinity:
Canva:

Twitter: @DaviesMediaDes
Instagram: @DaviesMediaDesign

#AdobeAlternatives #FreeSoftware #OpenSource

[Vaatho]

Davinci Resolve isn't just an alternative to Premiere, it absolutely crushes it in almost every aspect. Insane that it actually comes free as well, with about 90% of its full features.

[geoffphil]

I would have Inkscape above S level! I use it for everything. I find it reasonably stable and use it for document creation (I don't need Word any more), book production, basic image editing and cropping and of course graphic design. My favourite piece of software by far.

[EduardoRamirez-emqw]

I pretty sure Blender is not a substitute for after effects, it does have a compositor but is pretty far behind. The true replacement for Adobe After Effects and all the video and audio software from Adobe is definitely Davinci Resolve. It has Fusion and Fairlight for compositing and audio editor. Besides the editing and color tools. Very powerfull and the studio version is really worth it for the price. Single payment vs subscription bleeding. Ahh and also runs in Linux. Pretty well if you ask me.

[kameikojirou]

Inkscape is rock solid on Pop_OS/Linux for me. I haven't experienced a crash since 1.3

[hamedazhang]

You and Ton Roosendaal (Founder of Blender) caused a lot of trouble for the money-loving Adobe company. You are really great

[AfricanFlightStar]

Great job summarizing these programs, thanks for sharing!

[GaryParris]

I have also done presentations to other artists on how to go completely open source for the whole visual artist lifecycle. I only use Open source for everything everyday.

Darktable for me as a Photographer and Artist, Definitely an "A" tier! Krita is an "S" tier, it's colour handling, its used a lot in concept art, it makes use of 32Bit colour, can work with RAW files directly. Despite crashes you've experience which seems more stable on Linux, Inkscape is "A" tier for me, but otherwise i think you got most right and GIMP and Inkscape are definitely getting the improvements you mentioned so they will upgrade over this coming year, AI tools i really don't care about.

Also i can attest to Blenders breaking the hold of the industry definitely in a league of it's own and will continue to be as someone who uses it, it is awesome, 2D, 2.5D, 3D and all in one swiss army knife for creative tool definitely replacing the need for all the big name software in the 3D content industry.

[igorgiuseppe]

usually i hate this "Tier ranking" videos, because most are clickbait made by people who know nothing about an subject and are just giving their personal opinions.
but you are an expert artist so your opinion is quite valid, of course you arent expert at everything, but its a much better input than from any random person on the internet.

[BeckyAnn]

Personally, I think I would have placed the Affinity Suite in the S level, as it can do 95% of things its Adobe counterparts can do. I'm not heavy into AI Creation, so not having that feature is fine for my usage.
Also, IIRC Affinity still allows access to the Pantone books/swatches, so if that's a thing for you, Affinity wil have you covered.

[drsch]

No, adobe does not have better background removal and subject selection. Affinity does better in both cases than Photoshop and it does it faster and lighter. Affinity is a no brainier replacement for Photoshop. Not having Affinity as "S" tier but Canva as "S" tier makes me wonder about your expertise in this matter.

[mickjayplays]

Canva is B tier IMO...mainly for the fact that it's tricked people into thinking they are "designers" when they really don't know anything about design. Source? I used to own a small, boutique marketing agency and have recently moved back into the sign/pop/print side of marketing (where I started) and the amount of people doing their own "design" in Canva and then sending completely unusable "artwork" to be printed at scale is mind boggling. And then they get mad *at us* when we tell them their "beautiful design" can't be printed on a billboard when they sent us a postage-stamp-sized thumbnail. Canva has literally made design *worse* for actual designers and other industry pros.

[LifeLens]

Blender is also a 3D GIS (Geoinformation System) with a plugin. We use it at the university in geoinformatics

[yicao]

I feel hard to understand. I have see you have showed us a lot of softwares and show us something like SABCD. can you tell us what do they do? Recently, I am looking for a software or online based software for graphic design works. Which one can do that?

[noisevieux]

I would put Affinity in S tier, after using Photoshop and Lightroom for many years i can say that it's like 90% the Adobe counterparts. Is £159 for 3 programs for life vs a year subscription you would pay over £792 for one year for just few AI features that are not far for being well implemented if Affinity too. I understand using Adobe for a business or a studio that needs constant file sharing and adjustment but for single professionals and amateurs is just amazing in my opinion

[Sharonmarshall]

Thanks for this! Will have a play with the Affinity programs soon!

[Aduah]

I've used most of these programs especially as a big supporter of FOSS. I agree with most of your rankings however I dont agree with Inkscape being C tier. 2 major versions maybe. With the latest update I would have called it A tier, but with the crashing I'd call it B. It does have autosave though, so I've found when it does crash it's not terrible and you dont lose a lot of work. I havent used adobe in quite a few years, but Adobe suite programs used to crash a lot, and they didnt have auto save back then. I have heard premiere still crashes a lot (I dont know about photoshop/illustrator). Of these programs the ones I use on the regular is Krita, Inkscape & Blender.

[DaviesMediaDesign]

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[yannickfillon]

Hello, did you look into Raw Therapee? (Photoshop alternative)

[charleshacker]

Nicely done, fair assessment. We know you have been a foremost Gimp advocate over the years, so such comments should motivate some progress.

[alangauld]

A really interresting video that introduced a few new items to me. Of the ones I know I agree with all your placements. A couple of extra points:
- The Affinity Studio feature works in all the tools not just Publisher and the file format is shared by all so you can open a Publisher file in Photo or Designer for example, then save it and it will still open in Publisher later.
- Lightworks is a direct competitor to DaVinci Resolve and is probably an "A" product for its commercial version and a "B" for its freeware version (due to its slightly yucky licensing model and limited export options). Also Lightworks needs a beefy machine to run it well.