The Adobe Creative suite of programs, also known as Adobe CS, is the market leader in the professional sector of digital drawing, photo editing, video editing and also audio mixing. Just think of famous programs such as Photoshop, Premiere and Audition, all belonging to the Adobe Creative suite, used by both enthusiasts and digital professionals.
The problem is that none of these Adobe programs are free and indeed, they all cost a good amount.
It is therefore worth finding, for each Adobe Creative product, an equivalent program that is alternative, free and available for Windows PC and also for Linux .
1) Alternative to Adobe Photoshop: GIMP or Krita
GIMP is a free program like Photoshop and historical, always considered the only open source alternative, with almost the same functions, although less friendly and less simple.
In addition to GIMP, which still remains the best today, you can also try another free program called Krita which is much more modern and more user friendly than GIMP, more beautiful to look at and excellent for creating logos, drawings and paintings on the computer.
I had previously written about Krita talking about programs for drawing on the PC and digital painting.
2) As an alternative to Adobe Lightroom: Lightzone or RawTherapee
For a Photoshop photographer it may not be the most suitable application which is Lightroom.
As free alternatives to Lightroom there are several free programs for editing images and photos including Lightzone, which was born as an open source alternative for Lightroom, for editing photos in RAW format.
Other programs are Darktable only for Linux and RawTherapee, available for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs, with an easy to learn interface, even if it is missing some features.
3) As an alternative to Adobe Illustrator: Inkscape
It often happens that the free alternatives of expensive programs are much lower and not as good.
Inkscape is an exception, good enough to be considered as worthy of any other paid program such as Adobe Illustrator.
Inkscape, as already described in another article, is the one that must be used to create or modify vector graphics, the one used to create images to be printed or for logos or infographics.
4) As an alternative to Adobe Premiere Pro: Lightworks or Openshot
Professional video editing has often been seen as a more suitable activity for Macs (with iMovie), even if everything works well on a Windows PC.
Without using Adobe Premiere, Lightworks can be used on both Windows and Linux PCs, an excellent program that has also been used to make films such as The Wolf of Wall Street and Pulp Fiction.
Lightworks can be used for free in a limited version or can be purchased for around € 300.
The paid version unlocks all functions and can export videos up to 4K resolution.
Another free program that is powerful and suitable for professional use and which replaces Premiere is DaVinci Resolve .
If you want a completely free video editor, we can mention Openshot simple and complete video editing program for Linux and Mac PCs I mentioned recently.
Other alternatives are on the list of the best video editing programs, including the no longer supported Avidemux or the super 3D animation program Blender .
5) As an alternative for Adobe Animate: Synfig
Animate is the new name of the Flash Pro program, which has been used in the past to create Flash animations.
Now that websites have abandoned Flash in favor of HTML5, Adobe has renamed its professional software by calling it Animate.
Synfig the open source alternative, free and still updated to the Adobe program since 2005 and is still the best choice for those who want to create 2D vector animation projects without spending money.
Synfig uses its own animation file format, but it can export in AVI, MPG, GIF, SVG, PNG format.
6) As an alternative for Adobe Audition: LMMS
Audition is not as popular a software as Photoshop or Premiere Pro are, but it is still a high-level professional program used for mixing digital audio.
From what I know, Audition is mainly used by podcasters and by those who want to record and mix their music.
Speaking of free programs to edit audio music and recordings, there are Audacity and LMMS.
LMMS, formerly known as Linux MultiMedia Studio and which I had already described in the article on the best programs for mixing and creating music by professional DJs on the PC, is available for Windows and Linux PCs and works very well.
The interface is a little tricky at first and some effort will be required to learn how to use it, but the functions are all there.
7) As an alternative for Adobe InDesign: Scribus
Scribus, already mentioned among the alternative editorial printing programs to Microsoft Publisher, can be used to create brochures, newsletters, posters and even books and also to create animated and interactive PDF files.
FINAL NOTE: If you want, you can download the original programs of the Adobe Creative suite for free, if you are satisfied with the versions of a few years ago, belonging to Adobe Creative Suite 2 or CS2 (today we are at CC 2017).
For example you can download Adobe Photoshop for free in version CS 2.
