A cool guide software alternative

Gimp still isn't an effective competitor

It needs gui rework from a UI designer and is still lacking in features that creatives use

Blender is amazing though

Krita is a great program for art but I wish they'd implement full vector functionality

Reminds me of this:

Calling Figma free is like calling complimentary bread sticks a full dinner.

Penpot would be a better alternative. I never used it but it's gaining momentum.

I suspect they use a different definition of "Free" than we are used to. DaVinci Resolve and Figma are not FOSS, and have free and paid levels.

I believe the others are all free (as in beer) as well as free (as in speech).

As a former Photoshop user, I found all the paradigms and ways of thinking in Gimp were just so utterly different from what I was used to. Simple things like cropping, resizing selections and layer management felt like exercises in frustration.

Tried Krita instead, and I'm immediately feeling at home and able to be productive straight away.

I'm sure Gimp is awesome but my brain didn't like it. If anyone else is feeling the same way, give Krita a try.

This guide is misleading. Sure, the product functionalities overlap, but if you have a mature workflow, you will not be able to switch without investing a LOT of effort in relearning your workflow on the new product stack. This is one of my MAIN reasons I hate the "I tried to switch to Linux and failed" genre of content. You're not going to find identical like-for-like replacements in Linux world that won't require significant effort to relearn. It's something us Linux users through and through need to bear in mind.

Also, we need to be cognisant that "just switching to Linux" narratives, fueled off infographics like this, will lead to frustration and dismissal.

No, I don't know how to change this - and morphing e.g. gimp to be a clone of Photoshop isn't the answer either.

I really wish gimp could replace Photoshop but it absolutely cannot

GIMP sucks and still has a horrid UI experience.

This is free as in free beer.

Krita for anything graphic design. Krita's UI layout is a lot more similar to Photoshop than GIMP, which makes the switch easier.

Figma is the complete opposite of free software. It's a cloud-only proprietary software.

Correct me if I am wrong but DaVinci Resolve is not really free software, right? It is just free to use proprietary software. Freemium or some such

Replace Figma with Penpot

Figma and blender are good the rest you're better off with the paid

Photopea would be a better drop in than Gimp. But it's a website and that grinds my gears.

Photopea is another good (entirely browser-based) Photoshop alternative.

https://www.photopea.com/

Figma balls XD

My list is a bit different:

Photoshop ➡️ Krita Illustrator ➡️ Krita After Effects ➡️ Blender Premier Pro ➡️ kdenlive Adobe XD and Figma ➡️ Everything about these tools seems wrong to me (see comment below) Cinema 4D and 3DS Max ➡️ I thought everyone ditched those in favor of Blender long ago? LOL

I completely do not understand the appeal of tools like Figma. As a developer who's made lot of single page web applications (though not in a while... Maybe everything is different now? 🤷) tools like Figma seem like they'd create a major headache for developers.

I mean, sure: If a tool gives you a quick, easy, collaborative way to mock up a website and user interactions then by all means! But it looks like people are going far beyond that and using Figma to generate code. In my experience with such tools in the past, that's where everything goes wrong.

If the developers themselves aren't using the tool then the code will drift from the GUI design tool too much over time, becoming a boat anchor that holds development back and slows everything down. But maybe folks are just using it to get things started? I dunno. I just don't get the hype around it.

Then again, I'm a guy who does all his CAD design work in OpenSCAD so I might have something like a superpower in regards to visual reasoning that prevents me from understanding the issues others have with conceptualizing code-as-design 🤷

Every comment in this thread from beehaw is extremely negative.

If I can't do it in emacs, I do it in Blender.

People need to throw off the shackles of Adobe

Even if you don't care about open source everyone should support competition. Discord and YouTube can continue to get greedy and stop improving their products because they don't have any real competition.

Is there any good alternative to adobe animate?

Any recommendations for Lightroom?

Natron lol? Where did you get this from? Natron never really existed. Davinci has all the functions to replace AE.

Gimp sucks and should stop being mentioned as an alternative for anything.

Gimp should be released with photopeas

Lol Free Software?

Trying to learn how to use Natron felt impossible. It's a very different approach to what it does and I could not even start to figure it out.

Is there a good alternative to Adobe PDF. I mostly use it the view, print and edit PDF's. Plus forms. I've tried a few, but editing so far has sucked.

InDesign had those text boxes that you could link to the next text box with the little red plus, and the words would flow back and forth. It's the only thing in all of the Adobe Creative Suite that I miss! FUCK ADOBE, GIMP FOR LIFE!

It's always the same. Many people tell you how a software is not a replacement for other software. Of course it isn't, because otherwise it would be exactly the same piece of software.

Tell me a replacement for LaTeX, Postfix, zsh, vim or OpenSSH. There isn't, because these are the best from my point of view.

Instead of recommending one alternative, you sometimes need to combine them. The most powerful tools are btw combinable in a tool chain and the best are controllable from common scripting or programming languages.

I got a 3d printer (bambu p1s per someone's recommendation here) but the bambu software allows very little in the realm of adjusting a print (size for example is mostly what I can do).

I've been heavily overwhelmed looking into a 3d software editing platform to adjust prints. I don't have the capacity to learn multiple softwares, but I heard blender does pretty poorly in creating prints with hard dimensions.

While I do like to explore the realm of figurines and characters to print, I tend to use my printer for more engineered prints, things I measure and need a replacement for, or to fill in the need of something I'm I'm constructing.

This is where Adobe got most of the positive reviews for a 3d software that's best of both worlds. Creative and engineered. While blender is heavily leaning towards creative.

How about the iinux version of AutoCAD?

Or just pirate everything lol

Gimp is good. I don't know what the gimp haters are always so mad about. The buttons are in different places than in photoshop, big whoop. I have been able to do everything I've ever attempted in gimp and I do modding and game development. I just don't get it.

Gimp is fucking trash

only half of these are free software. the rest is freeware.

I found it quite useful to ask ChatGPT to compare these products. Very good neutral explanations I thought. It seems that almost all of theses boil down to "are you annoyed enough by Adobe's subscription model to switch?".