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These are all valid alternatives with real world use, but none of them are Photoshop, and that's kinda the problem we face. Krita - https://krita.org/en/ https

These are all valid alternatives with real world use, but none of them are Photoshop, and that's kinda the problem we face. Krita - https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/ Photopea - https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ GIMP - https://www.gimp.org/ https://www.gimp.org/ Inkscape- https://inkscape.org/ https://inkscape.org/ Affinity Photo - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ Paint.Net - https://www.getpaint.net/ https://www.getpaint.net/

viscousviolin 2y ago
*Inkscape not Inkspace
ffsm8 2y ago
For non professional use, photopea is seriously great too. Literally just a website you open that imitates the older Photoshop UI (pre-creative cloud)
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  Unfortunately Photopea can't have floating point precision since it is dependent on browser support.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    Technically speaking, it still could. It'd just have to implement it itself via strings. But yeah, it probably doesn't do that (I can't speak about the implementation, I'm entirely uninvolved). Though I've never actually encountered any errors because of that as my usecases are always pretty basic. Things like magic select, transparency, layers etc all work good enough that I haven't used anything besides this since I found out it ... sometime between 2015 and 2019.
_mlbt 2y ago
If you have a Mac, Pixelmator Pro is a great alternative as well. https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/
- cjk2 2y ago
  +1 for pixelmator Annoyingly there is nothing that gets close to Lightroom at the moment :(
  - optician_owl 2y ago
    Capture One.
    - cjk2 2y ago
      Yeah after posting that I'm actually downloading the trial now :)
  - goopthink 2y ago
    ACDSee
  - heartbreak 2y ago
    Have you tried Photomator from the Pixelmator folks?
    - coldtea 2y ago
      Until recently it couldn't really compete for what people use Lightroom for aside from editing (because it didn't have photo management). They've added it since a few months now in version 3.x.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Darktable is decent (in my experience). https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/
  - throw46365 2y ago
    Capture One is head and shoulders above Lightroom. But then so is its price, and it's a subscription model or a perpetual-and-no-updates model, which is an uncomfortable choice. I like DxO PhotoLab a lot -- it's my preferred tool because I find its raw conversions to be much more useful if you're trying to work with cameras of multiple ages and manufacturers -- but it lacks some of the library management that a lot of people like or need (stock shooters, journalists). Library management is not really an issue for me, and PhotoLab works well. Plus the simulations in FilmPack are, IMO, the best in the business for stills.
bromuro 2y ago
On Mac, Pixelmator Pro is the best - in my opinion.
spaniard89277 2y ago
My GF is a Designer/UX and she's been using Affinity tools and Cavalry (for animating stuff) and she's happy so far. Figma now requires to pay for the Dev mode, but that's ok.
- oniony 2y ago
  I thought Adobe acquired Figma.
  - janosdebugs 2y ago
    The deal fell through: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24005996/adobe-figma-acquisition-abandoned-termination-fee https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24005996/adobe-figma-acq...
spacebanana7 2y ago
What’re the best alternatives to premiere and after effects?
- bluetidepro 2y ago
  Davinci Resolve - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
  - misswaterfairy 2y ago
    Also: Natron (https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/) and Blender (https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/)
tuxalin 2y ago
And alternatives for Substance Painter and Designer: InstaMaterial (free for under 100k revenue) - https://instamaterial.com/ https://instamaterial.com/
pajko 2y ago
https://github.com/ktgw0316/LightZone https://github.com/ktgw0316/LightZone https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/
mechhacker 2y ago
Krita has gotten really great over the years, and it started out pretty good to begin with
PinguTS 2y ago
Adobe is much more than just Photoshop. That is the problem. Especially, if a bought into the whole movie pipeline with Premier, After Effects, and more.
- throw46365 2y ago
  InDesign is also an anchor product. Affinity Publisher is actually great and catching up on some of the niche tools InDesign offers, but I think it remains true that you can’t really flip some designers until you sell them on a new book/magazine/PDF layout tool.
reportgunner 2y ago
Will the world really stop turning if we can't use Photoshop™ for a year?
temporallobe 2y ago
Upvote for Inkscape! I’ve been using it professionally for many years now. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you master it, it’s very powerful software, and even script-able.
throw46365 2y ago
I’ve used Affinity Photo for nine years now, and my feeling is that the ways it is not like Photoshop likely would barely impact most Photoshop users. Some of the ways it is not like Photoshop are evidence of it being better-designed. I know a good few photographers who have switched, and for my photography I find it is an actively better tool. Cross-model colour curves, layer blending curves, and live filters are all useful, and the implementation of the built-in frequency separation tool is such that it’s possible to tailor it very subtly to the image so it can be used without the downsides of the Photoshop-type approach. Affinity Photo’s biggest problem remains the lack of a Bridge/Lightroom tool. Hopefully with Canva’s money this either gets resolved or they have the clout to get app developers like DxO, Capture One and Photo Mechanic to add closer round-trip integration with Affinity products. Affinity Designer really is a 100% credible alternative to Illustrator. Affinity Publisher is super and highly capable. So the Bridge alternative issue is a limiting factor for these too.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >I’ve used Affinity Photo for nine years now, and my feeling is that the ways it is not like Photoshop likely would barely impact most Photoshop users. Most professionals or most users who use Photoshop to crop and retouch some scratch in a photo? >I know a good few photographers who have switched, and for my photography I find it is an actively better tool Ah, photographers. Not the real heavy users of Photoshop though, despite the name of the product - it's graphic and print designers who need the fancy stuff. For most photography needs Capture One and others will also do.
  - throw46365 2y ago
    Graphic and print designers do not just use Photoshop; it’s not the right tool for that job. The bulk of that work happens outside Photoshop in Illustrator or InDesign. Affinity has matching applications (minus Lightroom and Bridge as I said). It also handles vectors and text just fine in Photo and has integration functionality to edit between Designer (their Illustrator alternative) and Photo, and even more impressive integration once Publisher is added to the mix. But I've used Photo on its own for tasks like banner ads, header images, and a couple of full-colour flyers (it's not my main area of expertise so I generally do not) Take a look at an Affinity video demonstrating Publisher (their InDesign competitor). Once you combine the three apps it is surprisingly powerful and a pretty credible alternative to InDesign. Given that you can buy the entire suite outright for desktop and iPad for the price of about four months of full Creative Cloud, I think it’s at least worth considering, though the asset management side is still obviously lacking somewhat as I said. ETA: photographer workflows can be considerably more complex than your characterisation! I have a darkroom-soft-focus simulation in live filters in one of my projects, cross-model curves (Lab curves on an RGB image without switching modes) in several, a black and white negative processing stack, HALD CLUT inference macros, and I know people doing colour neg corrections entirely in Affinity Photo (which is a task people often delegate to something like Silverfast)
llm_trw 2y ago
>Photopea - https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ This is an online only tool. They will do the same thing photoshop did soon enough.
janosdebugs 2y ago
Does anyone have a reasonably feature complete alternative for Audition? I tried several paid and free ones, none seem to make it easy to work with multitrack audio in a non-destructive fashion.
- DHPersonal 2y ago
  If it's for podcast editing, which is what I used Audition for in my old job, then I've seen people use GarageBand[1] or DaVinci Fairlight[2]. 1: https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/ https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/ 2: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/davinciresolve/fairlight https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/davinciresolve/...
  - janosdebugs 2y ago
    It's for making game sounds. Fairlight looks like it could work though, thanks!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
stephen_g 2y ago
I’ve switched to Pixelmator Pro (Mac only) as a Photoshop replacement, Capture One for photo processing and Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator as of a couple of years ago. I already used Final Cut Pro for video before I switched the others.
washadjeffmad 2y ago
And don't discount Adobe CS. I've been working with more and more artists who've found their zen in hoarding old Macs to be able to continue running all of their custom scripts and software forever. Wherever their art intersects with the digital, using CS, they can fully avoid today's "Adobe tax". There are also non-Adobe pipeline utilities for pretty much every process, but they're not usually taught in schools. However, if your role is to interact with people who only rely on modern Adobe, you more or less have to, as well. There's a certain pride people have in owning their tools and not being dictated to by software, so I'm generally happy to accommodate anyone who I find personally resonant.

viscousviolin 2y ago

*Inkscape not Inkspace

ffsm8 2y ago

For non professional use, photopea is seriously great too. Literally just a website you open that imitates the older Photoshop UI (pre-creative cloud)

ImHereToVote 2y ago
Unfortunately Photopea can't have floating point precision since it is dependent on browser support.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Technically speaking, it still could. It'd just have to implement it itself via strings. But yeah, it probably doesn't do that (I can't speak about the implementation, I'm entirely uninvolved). Though I've never actually encountered any errors because of that as my usecases are always pretty basic. Things like magic select, transparency, layers etc all work good enough that I haven't used anything besides this since I found out it ... sometime between 2015 and 2019.

_mlbt 2y ago

If you have a Mac, Pixelmator Pro is a great alternative as well. https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/

cjk2 2y ago
+1 for pixelmator Annoyingly there is nothing that gets close to Lightroom at the moment :(
- optician_owl 2y ago
  Capture One.
  - cjk2 2y ago
    Yeah after posting that I'm actually downloading the trial now :)
- goopthink 2y ago
  ACDSee
- heartbreak 2y ago
  Have you tried Photomator from the Pixelmator folks?
  - coldtea 2y ago
    Until recently it couldn't really compete for what people use Lightroom for aside from editing (because it didn't have photo management). They've added it since a few months now in version 3.x.
- hajile 2y ago
  Darktable is decent (in my experience). https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/
- throw46365 2y ago
  Capture One is head and shoulders above Lightroom. But then so is its price, and it's a subscription model or a perpetual-and-no-updates model, which is an uncomfortable choice. I like DxO PhotoLab a lot -- it's my preferred tool because I find its raw conversions to be much more useful if you're trying to work with cameras of multiple ages and manufacturers -- but it lacks some of the library management that a lot of people like or need (stock shooters, journalists). Library management is not really an issue for me, and PhotoLab works well. Plus the simulations in FilmPack are, IMO, the best in the business for stills.

bromuro 2y ago

On Mac, Pixelmator Pro is the best - in my opinion.

spaniard89277 2y ago

My GF is a Designer/UX and she's been using Affinity tools and Cavalry (for animating stuff) and she's happy so far. Figma now requires to pay for the Dev mode, but that's ok.

oniony 2y ago
I thought Adobe acquired Figma.
- janosdebugs 2y ago
  The deal fell through: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24005996/adobe-figma-acquisition-abandoned-termination-fee https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24005996/adobe-figma-acq...

spacebanana7 2y ago

What’re the best alternatives to premiere and after effects?

bluetidepro 2y ago
Davinci Resolve - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
- misswaterfairy 2y ago
  Also: Natron (https://natrongithub.github.io/ https://natrongithub.github.io/) and Blender (https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/)

tuxalin 2y ago

And alternatives for Substance Painter and Designer: InstaMaterial (free for under 100k revenue) - https://instamaterial.com/ https://instamaterial.com/

pajko 2y ago

https://github.com/ktgw0316/LightZone https://github.com/ktgw0316/LightZone https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/

mechhacker 2y ago

Krita has gotten really great over the years, and it started out pretty good to begin with

PinguTS 2y ago

Adobe is much more than just Photoshop. That is the problem. Especially, if a bought into the whole movie pipeline with Premier, After Effects, and more.

throw46365 2y ago
InDesign is also an anchor product. Affinity Publisher is actually great and catching up on some of the niche tools InDesign offers, but I think it remains true that you can’t really flip some designers until you sell them on a new book/magazine/PDF layout tool.

reportgunner 2y ago

Will the world really stop turning if we can't use Photoshop™ for a year?

temporallobe 2y ago

Upvote for Inkscape! I’ve been using it professionally for many years now. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you master it, it’s very powerful software, and even script-able.

throw46365 2y ago

I’ve used Affinity Photo for nine years now, and my feeling is that the ways it is not like Photoshop likely would barely impact most Photoshop users. Some of the ways it is not like Photoshop are evidence of it being better-designed. I know a good few photographers who have switched, and for my photography I find it is an actively better tool. Cross-model colour curves, layer blending curves, and live filters are all useful, and the implementation of the built-in frequency separation tool is such that it’s possible to tailor it very subtly to the image so it can be used without the downsides of the Photoshop-type approach. Affinity Photo’s biggest problem remains the lack of a Bridge/Lightroom tool. Hopefully with Canva’s money this either gets resolved or they have the clout to get app developers like DxO, Capture One and Photo Mechanic to add closer round-trip integration with Affinity products. Affinity Designer really is a 100% credible alternative to Illustrator. Affinity Publisher is super and highly capable. So the Bridge alternative issue is a limiting factor for these too.

coldtea 2y ago
>I’ve used Affinity Photo for nine years now, and my feeling is that the ways it is not like Photoshop likely would barely impact most Photoshop users. Most professionals or most users who use Photoshop to crop and retouch some scratch in a photo? >I know a good few photographers who have switched, and for my photography I find it is an actively better tool Ah, photographers. Not the real heavy users of Photoshop though, despite the name of the product - it's graphic and print designers who need the fancy stuff. For most photography needs Capture One and others will also do.
- throw46365 2y ago
  Graphic and print designers do not just use Photoshop; it’s not the right tool for that job. The bulk of that work happens outside Photoshop in Illustrator or InDesign. Affinity has matching applications (minus Lightroom and Bridge as I said). It also handles vectors and text just fine in Photo and has integration functionality to edit between Designer (their Illustrator alternative) and Photo, and even more impressive integration once Publisher is added to the mix. But I've used Photo on its own for tasks like banner ads, header images, and a couple of full-colour flyers (it's not my main area of expertise so I generally do not) Take a look at an Affinity video demonstrating Publisher (their InDesign competitor). Once you combine the three apps it is surprisingly powerful and a pretty credible alternative to InDesign. Given that you can buy the entire suite outright for desktop and iPad for the price of about four months of full Creative Cloud, I think it’s at least worth considering, though the asset management side is still obviously lacking somewhat as I said. ETA: photographer workflows can be considerably more complex than your characterisation! I have a darkroom-soft-focus simulation in live filters in one of my projects, cross-model curves (Lab curves on an RGB image without switching modes) in several, a black and white negative processing stack, HALD CLUT inference macros, and I know people doing colour neg corrections entirely in Affinity Photo (which is a task people often delegate to something like Silverfast)

llm_trw 2y ago

>Photopea - https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ This is an online only tool. They will do the same thing photoshop did soon enough.

janosdebugs 2y ago

Does anyone have a reasonably feature complete alternative for Audition? I tried several paid and free ones, none seem to make it easy to work with multitrack audio in a non-destructive fashion.

DHPersonal 2y ago
If it's for podcast editing, which is what I used Audition for in my old job, then I've seen people use GarageBand[1] or DaVinci Fairlight[2]. 1: https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/ https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/ 2: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/davinciresolve/fairlight https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/davinciresolve/...
- janosdebugs 2y ago
  It's for making game sounds. Fairlight looks like it could work though, thanks!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

stephen_g 2y ago

I’ve switched to Pixelmator Pro (Mac only) as a Photoshop replacement, Capture One for photo processing and Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator as of a couple of years ago. I already used Final Cut Pro for video before I switched the others.

washadjeffmad 2y ago

And don't discount Adobe CS. I've been working with more and more artists who've found their zen in hoarding old Macs to be able to continue running all of their custom scripts and software forever. Wherever their art intersects with the digital, using CS, they can fully avoid today's "Adobe tax". There are also non-Adobe pipeline utilities for pretty much every process, but they're not usually taught in schools. However, if your role is to interact with people who only rely on modern Adobe, you more or less have to, as well. There's a certain pride people have in owning their tools and not being dictated to by software, so I'm generally happy to accommodate anyone who I find personally resonant.