Courtesy to Twitter user XdanielArt (date of publication: 8 June 2024)
Another great alternative to Acrobat (Reader) 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.
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.
Or if you have to use Adobe products, at least have the decency not to pay for them.
Honestly, GIMP is not a good alternative to Photoshop. I know, "it's free" is enough for many people, but it ... just isn't.
With GIMP 3.0 it's a bit better at least, they've finally added non-destructive editing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfaq-Cm1ZkA
Full changelog here:
https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html
I'd dare say that unless you've already learnt Photoshop (and have to unlearn it) then Darktable+GIMP works fine for home photo editing.
If you're used to Photoshop and your skills with it is what puts bread on the table... then I completely understand not switching tools.
As somebody who has been trying to decided which of the RAW photo editors to use, I can tell you that Darktable has a steep learning curve over Lightroom. The UI is incredibly dense and the names of sliders don’t make sense unless you’re an image science expert.
I'll take your word for it, I've never used Lightroom.
Whenever I played around with Darktable it seems finding a tutorial to get the effect I wanted was just a minute of searching away, and there's a ton of beginner tutorials available too.
https://www.darktable.org/2024/12/howto-in-5.0/
But then I was the kid that rtfm the game manual on my way home from the store and love dense UIs as an adult. :)
My go-to PS app:
All online, same controls, hell, same icons. I'm a little stunned that Adobe hasn't sued them into oblivion.
You can pay to drop the ads, but I'm not really seeing much end user benefit otherwise. Not seeing ads ATM, maybe I blocked 'em.
The same with Lightroom sadly. The open source alternatives are either too buggy or have UX designed by very "opinionated" people, making them painful and frustrating to use. I currently want to get rid of Lightroom but can't.
Give Darktable a go. I switched from LR to DT a year ago and im never going back.
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?
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, rinse 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.
For PDF "your browser" should be the default recommendation. Firefox allows to add text and images now. Gimp can also be used to edit PDF.
Browser is nice. On Linux though, Okular is superb (except for its occasional problems with forms).
I'm really disappointed not to see Okular there. It's FOSS, and it's very cozy and useful.
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.
What the actual fuck is adobe acrobat? A pdf editor with subscription model payment? Firefox, the browser, can edit pdf files. It's 2025.
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. There are also "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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn't generally 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 once the PDF is created.
Certainly there isn't a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job but not perfect which may be what you're referring to. And they're not dedicated PDF makers plus the real problem is building fillable forms and signature tools.
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. But it's a viable alternative to the "adobe tax".
Also of course if you have Office 365 from Microsoft, you can use Word to export docs to PDF reliably (in my experience). Obviously as far as you can get from FOSS, but it is an option on Linux via web browser if you have it from work for example; at least you don't have to pay Adobe but it's scraping the bottom of the barrel for this threat I know!
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.
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
Davinci Resolve has to be one of the most jam packed free software packages available… seriously, it absolutely trounces Premiere at evvvverything
the model of free for everything except if features you’d want for producing a professional movie, and financed by hardware sales - that you don’t need unless you’re a professional - is absolutely incredible for home users
Shout out to pdfgear.
Does almost all the pdf file manipulation anyone needs and it's free.
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?
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
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)
Adobe's prices are outrageous.
Holy shit $23/mo and they won’t even host the website for you?
Libre Office Draw is another Ai alternative
Countering Animator with Blender, that's brutal. For at least some stuff Blender is also the better Illustrator.
Thank you very much for this, I already use four programs out of those, time look into more 😉
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.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
