22 Adobe Creative Cloud Alternatives to Download in 2023

Professional photographers, designers, and filmmakers should definitely incorporate these Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives into their workflow.

Are you looking for a decent analog to Adobe Creative Cloud to save your some money? Purchasing the entire suite of Adobe products is rather expensive, as you have to spend $52.99 per month. You may not need such a large collection of programs unless you do photography and videography professionally and produce tons of media content.

You may start with free Adobe software. However, it doesn’t offer functionality that will cater to the needs of advanced users.

In this article, I have collected free and cheap programs that will help you improve photos for your portfolio, create remarkable graphics for social media platforms or a presentation video.

These alternatives to Adobe Creative Cloud emulate the functionality Adobe products but are available absolutely free of charge. Using them, you can perform retouching, create drawings and graphic design projects, and improve video clips. These programs will also come in handy if you are engaged in the development of motion graphics, animation, prototypes, and web design.

If you compare GIMP vs Photoshop, the former is great for small businesses or photo enthusiasts who are in search of user-friendly editing software with basic functionality. As for Photoshop, it is a choice of professionals. Although GIMP doesn't have such accurate organization as Photoshop, it comes with a relatively intuitive user interface.

GIMP includes layers, customizable brushes, filters, and tools for automatic image enhancement. It supports a large number of plug-ins (some of them are preinstalled while others are available for download separately).

For more advanced users, there are also a lot of possibilities, including layer masks, Bezier curves, filters, and animation packages. Another bragging point is its open-source nature, so experienced users can easily adapt the program to their needs instead of looking for another photo editing software.

The functionality of Pixlr is suitable even for those engaged in portrait editing. That is why many users consider this Adobe Creative suite alternative as a simplified web-based version of Photoshop. The main difference between this program and Photoshop for Mac and PC is that it doesn’t offer batch editing functionality.

Pixlr offers a large choice of filters – both funny and classical (b&w, sepia, film) ones. In addition, this software supports layers and masks for advanced editing. All brushes and other tools are customizable. You can adjust each aspect of your photo manually by customizing colors, exposure, and levels. But there are also automatic tools that can help you enhance your pictures as fast as possible.

PhotoScape X offers tools for easy viewing of photo collections, creating collages and composite images, generating animated GIFs and printing improved images, screenshots, batch renaming of files and color correction.

PhotoScape X also offers a drawing function. Besides, users appreciate the possibility to apply changes to fragments of one picture and to multiple images in batch mode.

RawTherapee establishes itself as a fast, effective cataloger that supports RAW files and offers the function of management and editing in different picture libraries. This editor has improved color correction, histogram matching and displaying of tones with high dynamic range (HDR). Also, it is supports non-destructive editing.

It also offers plenty of tools for tone correction, noise removal, rotation, change of shadows and light, exposure control, tone and white balance adjustments, so you can fully rely on the program if you don't want to buy Lightroom.

LightZone allows enhancing photos, fixing defects, correcting colors, adjusting white balance, selectively blurring or sharping images, and removing dust and noise. All operations that are performed in this free Lightroom alternative are reversible and don’t affect the original picture.

You can add seven tone curves or adjust the color in 13 modules. Among its features, I like the “real-time preview” function. One more important feature is its styles which can help you add some creative effects to pictures, including high dynamic range (HDR), sepia, etc.

Darktable features a virtual light table to view RAW photos and a darkroom to enhance pictures. It supports RAW image processing for more than 400 cameras. This software was developed specifically for photographers who want to perfectly organize their images.

The program can maintain a database of original photos, carry out visual navigation through images, correct distortion, and change the quality without affecting the original image. Also, it keeps a complete history of all operations.

Inkscape slightly emulates the features of Adobe Illustrator for Mac. However, once you compare Illustrator vs Inkscape, you will see that the bragging point of Inkscape is a Freehand tool (Pencil) and Calligraphy pen. Moreover, with the Bezier tool, you can create paths made up of straight and curved lines.

With the help of Bezier tool, you can either draw an approximate track that will be changed later or add exact curves on track to minimize work carried out after creating the track. Other tools such as Spray, Eraser and Gradient offer several convenient shortcuts for creating very interesting effects without much effort. For instance, Spray can use another object as a selection.

Affinity Designer allow you to create promotional materials, websites, concept arts, icons and other UI elements. Using the program, you can make sketches anywhere and anytime on your iPad, Mac or Windows laptop, and export the finished project in any popular graphics format.

You can use layer effects, styles, all types of blending modes and masks. With a 95% probability, Affinity Designer will open PSD files, preserving layer styles, transparency, etc. All these features make Affinity Design a great option if you don't want to buy Adobe Illustrator.

An important advantage of Vectr is the ability to work together with other users. The strongest advantage of the program is that it can work offline, so you can perform the necessary edits even if you don't have the Internet connection.

You just need to send your colleagues a link to your project so that they can participate in discussion and editing. Every element of the UI is well-though-out, so mastering the program won’t take much time.

Even though this software has a steep learning curve, filmmakers, who don't want to buy Adobe Premiere, will appreciate its capabilities. DaVinci Resolve includes high-performance video production modules for editing, color grading, sound reproduction as well as video effects and motion graphics.

This free video editing software offers classic timeline with a multimedia pool, effects and sounds libraries, sound mixer, inspector and the possibility to work with an unlimited number of audio and video tracks. The program also provides new audio plug-ins and functions, editable page title templates, browser of a color pages’ lookup table (LUT) and common color knots.

Easy to use video and audio editing program

Price: Free or $19,99

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows / iOS / Android

VideoPad has a familiar workflow of timeline/storyboard which means you can view your project linearly or each individual object no matter how long it takes. It allows you to easily edit videos, including your own clips, recorded on a digital, tape, or web camera.

You can use video transitions and effects, create and edit musical compositions. It is possible to fine-tune all transitions: change duration, angle, color, and speed. This Adobe Premiere Pro alternative works with all popular formats, including 3D.

You can crop frames of the footage, pan and zoom, add motion blur and adjust such parameters as shade, saturation, exposure, etc. In addition, this program allows you to import, edit and export 4K videos with ultra-high resolution. You can use Premiere Pro for free only for 7 days, while VideoPad offers a free plan with no time limits.

With professional-grade VFX functionality

Price: Free or $349

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows

After comparing Adobe Premiere vs HitFilm, I found out that Adobe Premiere Pro may be rather complicated for novice users. Hitfilm Express brags about more user-friendly functionality.

Both programs have such features as multi-track editing, Trim and Text tools. However, the sequence management in HitFilm Express is not as effective as in Premiere Pro.

After you’re done editing a video, you can quickly export it in a high quality. There are two versions of the program - free HitFilm Express and paid HitFilm Pro. The first version has slightly limited capabilities but they are enough for basic tasks. Hitfilm Express offers a lot of built-in templates that will help you do the necessary work without any extra effort.

HitFilm Express is a great alternative, allowing you to trim, combine video parts, add music, create transitions and titles, add masks, transformations, and effects (you can create your own), and perform color grading of an unlimited number of tracks. The most popular features among professionals are object tracking, creation of particle systems, 3D object importing, and Chroma key.

Best for 3D creation

Price: Free

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows / Linux

After Effects is a popular program that is designed for creating extraordinary visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing. Blender caters to the needs of those who work with 3D models and animations.

If you are going to create complex computer graphics and complement your project with visual effects, Blender is your option in the Blender vs After Effects contest.

This intuitive editor offers plenty of tools for creating animation films, visual effects, 3D-printed models, 3D applications, and video games. It’s equipped with comprehensive modeling tools, which means you can quickly create, edit and transform models. This motion graphics software provides instruments for falsification and animation. Users can also combine 2D with 3D in a preview window.

This alternative to Adobe After Effects has a fluid simulator, which enables users to create the effects of flowing bodies, such as smoke or liquids. In real-time, it is possible to calculate physical tasks, for example, simulate the behavior of soft solids.

Open-source compositing software

Price: Free

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows / Linux

If you are picking between Natron vs After Effects, pay attention to their features. While After Effects allows you to complement your projects with video effects and animated graphics, Natron incorporates advanced features for professional film production.

Moreover, you can get After Effects for free only for seven days. Natron has an open-source code and is available free of charge.

Natron is non-linear video editing software for Windows, which you can take advantage of if you don't want to buy Adobe After Effects. The program allows you to work with an unlimited number of video and audio tracks, add various special effects and apply all kinds of filters.

User can also combine several graphic and audio objects into one. Rich functionality, a well-thought-out modular interface, support for 2K and 4K video and OpenFX plug-ins make Natron promising storyboard software.

50+ built-in layers

Price: Free

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows / Linuxx

Even though Synfig has different drawing capabilities than Adobe Animate, it has excellent functionality, 50+ built-in layers. It also allows working with bitmap images, and creating cutout animation. This open-source software is used to create professional 2D animations.

The program allows you to use vector and raster images to create animations instead of the "frame by frame" method. If you don’t want to get free trial version of Adobe Animate, you can use Synfig Studio with its various types of layers, gradients, distortions, filters, and transitions to create your animation.

It also provides full support for gradient paths, making it easy for you to add a soft hue to animation without having to draw it in each frame. Synfig Studio allows you to save animations as SIF (default project), SIFZ (gzip-compressed project), and SFG (zip compressed). You can import multiple images into your project, including PNG, JPEG, BMP, and SVG files.

Web-based animation maker

Price: Free or $15/mo

Platforms: Online

Animatron helps create fantastic videos and animations. The program has a user-friendly interface and fascinating characters. The program is based on the latest and safest HTML5 technology, which provides smooth playback on both desktop and mobile devices.

Animatron also has impressive import options: you can import fonts, images, video, and audio in a variety of formats. Aside from supporting HTML5 exporting formats, Animatron Studio integrates with Google AdWords and DoubleClick.

The library includes 500K royalty-free media files. In addition, there are two modes (for beginners and pros), so you can choose the suitable option and achieve your creative goals.

With first-class DTP tools

Price: Free

Platforms: Mac OS / Windows / Linux etc.

The Adobe product is a leader in the Scribus vs InDesign battle due to a larger feature set. Moreover, Scribus has an outdated interface. You can use Adobe InDesign only if you pay for its subscription. Scribus is available free of charge.

Scribus was originally developed by typography and printing professionals. Therefore, it has quite a wide range of professional text layout and prepress.

This desktop publishing software can help you create all types of documents quickly and effectively – from brochures to business cards. You can use one of the available templates or create the design manually using built-in advanced tools.

Collaborative publishing tool

Price: Free or $10/mo

Platforms: Online

If you can’t choose between Adobe InDesign and Lucidpress, determine your purposes first. While Adobe InDesign has a well-elaborated graphic feature set, Lucidpress is suitable for creating flyers, presentations, brochures, newsletters, etc.

Furthermore, Lucidpress is a web-based program that uses HTML 5 protocols. Therefore, there is no need to launch Flash player to use this program.

When you start Lucidpress, you’ll see a document containing several pages to which you can add your content. You can drag text fields and images around, redraw pictures, choose from hundreds of available fonts or upload your own fonts and more.

This InDesign alternative is an easy-to-use tool, but with limited free features. You can’t edit documents that contain over 3 pages. In addition, you can use only 25 MB of storage.

350+ million images

Price: Free or $29/mo

Platforms: Online

Adobe Stock guarantees smooth workflow and compatibility with all Creative Cloud products. However, if you compare Shutterstock vs Adobe Stock, the Creative Cloud alternative is more budget-friendly and includes a more extensive library of stock images. Thus is a number one choice for those who need stock images.

Shutterstock brags about the largest collection of images, music, video, and editorial assets. The best thing is that most pictures are available free of charge. Finding a proper photo won’t take much time, thanks to intuitive search and filter functions.

Shutterstock’s Editor tool also lets you customize a photo quickly and perform operations like cropping pics and adding filters. If you are preparing a project and plan to share it on YouTube, this is the best place to search for components. The thing is that YouTube and similar platforms scan videos for copyright, and when you use content from Shutterstock, all license nuances are completely covered.

Excellent stock community

Price: Free or $23/mo

Platforms: Online

Dreamstime is a popular place for getting pictures for magazines, advertising agencies, and media companies. Having compared Dreamstime to similar platforms, I can confidently say that it contains the most affordable visual materials, ensuring their quality is on point.

The collection contains over 169 million pictures, music, video, vectors, sound effects, and illustration. You can choose from different subscription plans and credit packs based on your financial capabilities. Either you need some cheap stock images or want to earn money by selling yours, Dreamstime is a wonderful place to visit.

It is possible to get Adobe Stock for free only for a week. If it comes to Dreamstime, you can try a 7-day trial, but the number of photos for downloading is limited.

With streamlined collaboration functionality

Price: Free or $9/mo

Platforms: Mac OS / Online

While Adobe XD is a popular option for Windows users, Sketch is suitable for Mac fans and those who need good plug-in support. When I compared Sketch vs Adobe XD, I understood that the former was a great program for creating desktop and mobile interface layouts, prototypes, and mockups.

Sketch can come in handy if you want to edit and manipulate images. Unlike most drawing software, Sketch makes it easy to create interactive prototypes. For example, to emulate the prototype of your website or application and see how you can scroll down the screen, you can choose the scrolling or non-scrolling areas, create cross-linking between pages, sections, menus, and define hotspots.

This Adobe Creative suite alternative is especially demanded among teams due to its collaborative features. Once you import a file to Sketch Cloud, you can use libraries and organize teamwork to edit your project.

There are multiple features for joint work, conducting experiments with templates, realizing different ideas, etc. An integrated digital dashboard allows visualizing concepts to understand how successful there are.

The most popular features of InVision are prototype creation, presentations, wireframing, digital whiteboards, planning, and feedback management. Thanks to the Inspect module, you can speed up your overall workflow and prototype development in particular.