The writing has been on the wall for some time, now. Adobe had been making big changes and updates to most of their apps except Fireworks, and on the day they announced they were killing the Creative Suite for the Creative Cloud, they also announced they would be ending the development for Fireworks.
Most people won’t miss it, as it’s been the red-headed step-child of the Adobe apps ever since it was acquired by Macromedia. An acquisition we all new was made for Dreamweaver and Flash.
Fireworks was an old favorite of mine. I’ve mocked-up and developed many websites with its pixel perfect, made for the web approach. It was one of my favorites, until I recently found a better solution.
In fact, I’ve started to find a number of solid Adobe alternatives, that are not only more cost effective, but do a fantastic job. There are becoming fewer and fewer Adobe apps that I would consider using from the bloated number of apps included in the Creative Cloud.
Here’s my personal favorites, but I would love to hear yours!
My Adobe Photoshop Alternative
My favorite is Pixelmator while I almost went with Acorn. I’ve been using Pixelmator for almost a year, now, and haven’t ever needed to open Photoshop. This will work for a majority of users, as Photoshop has features most will never need or dig into. When you consider the price point of Pixelmator ($14) compared to a month worth of time with Photoshop, you really should take Pixelmator’s 14-day free trial.
What’s your favorite Photoshop alternative?
My Adobe Illustrator & Fireworks Alternative
Sketch is my new favorite.
In fact, it totally pulled me away from Fireworks. You can even export straight to CSS! I also like how it functions like Adobe Illustrator. I’m no Illustrator pro, so Sketch is a breath of fresh air. Plus, you can design without worrying so much about your pixel size, as it’s vector base. Need a larger version of the logo you just mocke-up? Just stretch it bigger.
For $50 you can have Sketch, or pay for one month of the Creative Cloud.
What’s your favorite Illustrator and/or Fireworks alternatives?
My Dreamweaver Alternative
LOL! I would have to use Dreamweaver regularly for it be an alternative, but I kind of had a pattern going with the titles, here. 😛
I like to use Coda 2 for heavier code, but when it comes to designing, I like Espresso. I can flip to my preview pane to see my changes, plus, all the CSS properties are available with slick pull downs. It’s a very enjoyable way to design your CSS.
Dreameaver? I’ll always pass on this.
What’s your favorite Dreamweaver alternative?
My Adobe Audition Alternative
This is where we begin to get into Adobe’s weaker apps. I would almost always choose ProTools and Cubase over Adobe Audition. I know Audition has made a lot of improvements over the past few years and it integrates well with Adobe Premiere Pro, but much like Dreamweaver, this was never my first choice to begin with.
What’s your favorite Audition alternative?
Looking for Adobe InDesign, After Effects & Premiere Pro Alternatives
I know many of you are going to say Final Cut Pro, but there has been some criticism as the direction Apple has taken it. A number of the alternative I’ve listed are not as deep as Adobe products, so I suppose this may be the case with Final Cut Pro as well. When I’m ready to bump past what iMovie is doing for me, I’ll strongly consider Final Cut Pro, as I’ve been happy with all my Adobe alternatives thus far.
And After Effects? If you’re going to go with Final Cut Pro, you might as well go with Apple Motion. Both of these apps can be bought and paid for, unlike the Creative Cloud, for $350.
What’s your favorite Premiere Pro and After Effects alternatives?
This still leaves Adobe InDesign. This is the only app I’ve yet to find a suitable solution. I’ve put a lot of hours into InDesign, and like some of the other Adobe apps, it feels like I could get by on a lot less options and be a lot more happy with the results while saving some bucks.
What’s your favorite InDesign alternative?
Conclusion
There are a number of other add-ons that Adobe has thrown into the Creative Cloud. None of which warrants investing the $50 per month to have. I understand what Adobe is doing and while half of me really likes the idea, the other half is still in love with the idea of purchasing and app and owning it. Setting that argument aside, however, Adobe apps feel stuck to me and are usually overkill for most people. More and more alternatives are popping-up that are cheaper and sometimes more innovative than the Adobe offerings that sometimes feel bloated.
Tell us your favorite Adobe alternatives, as some of us don’t want or need to rent our software.
Joanna says
When it comes to Photoshop alternatives, I quite like GIMP. Although it has a few weird quirks, it is free and does pretty much everything I would be using in Photoshop as a non-professional user.
I’ve also been experimenting with Pixlr Editor (http://pixlr.com/editor/) which is a free cloud based photoshop alternative. Haven’t tested it well yet, but for quick image touch ups on work computers that lack good graphics software, it’s been a really useful tool. Their stripped down cloud app Pixlr Express is great for instagram style photo filtering too http://pixlr.com/express/
Eric Dye says
Great links, Joanna! GIMP is a good free alternative.
Darius says
All of your app choices are Mac-only. Any solid Windows alternatives out there?
Eric Dye says
Solid? That’s tough. Perhaps I can put a list for that together. Photoshop – GIMP, Illustrator – Inkscape, and of course there’s the COREL suite that’s worth a look. I used it back in the day–not bad at all.
Darius says
I have to admit… I’ve always been prone to go to GIMP instead of Photoshop, regardless of platform. Seemed to fit my needs without a lot of extra stuff.
Now, COREL… It still exists? What?
Regarding audio – I’ll second Audacity. It might not be as feature-rich as some others, but I specifically use it as a mobile recording tool installed on a netbook running Xubuntu. IMO, it’s the perfect tool for that!
Eric Dye says
Yeah. It still exists … along with Word Perfect! 😛
Matt says
I’ve always liked GIMP as a Photoshop alternative. I’m no pro, but it does most of what I need (Layers, gradients, filters, color corrections on stills, masks, etc.) for free.
Audacity is also a great free Audition alternative. It’s a little slower and doesn’t have some of the newer bells and whistles, but it does let you do multi-track and batch processing, as well as the usual effects and filters you’d expect.
Both are cross-platform.
Eric Dye says
Yeah. I used Audacity for converting to mp3. Unfortunately, audio editing hits a pretty deep niche, so you won’t find nearly the feature set you can expect from the $99 Cubase 1st tier app.
Chandos says
I agree with Pixelmator. Especially after the update today. And with layer styles coming soon, it’ll have everything I need.
I have always been a Final Cut guy, and actually LOVE the new one. I’m a Motion junkie too. When I was in school, we primarily used After Effects for motion graphics, but I couldn’t afford it once I got out of school. So I taught myself Motion and haven’t looked back!
Eric Dye says
Really!?! That’s a great encouragement, as I’ve strongly considered this instead of the Adobe offering. 😀
Chandos says
Oh man, Motion is so great. It has so many smart, easy-to-use tools that make stuff absolutely brilliant. And with the new FCP X, it has “publishing” so you can set up parameters in Motion that are changeable in FCP, without cluttering the controls too much.
And the $50 price tag is so appealing 🙂
Eric Dye says
Nice. 🙂
Raoul Snyman says
As a Linux guy, none of these options are even remotely on my horizon.
The apps I use (some of these are available on OS X and Windows too):
– GIMP
– Inkscape
– Audacity
– LMMS
– Kate (the KDE Advanced Text Editor – think Notepad++ for Linux)
– Kdenlive (not a contender for FCP, etc, but a decent light-weight video editor)
I’ve been told that when it comes to audio, nothing quite matches Ardour. Ardour is a Linux-only app though, and I actually haven’t ever used it.
Eric Dye says
I’ve seen Ardour and it’s pretty nice, especially since you don’t need an interface for latency, as it uses your available RAM.
Jonathan Ober says
I pretty much use all the same ones as you, though I’m still using photoshop a lot. I use pixelmator, for photo editing, but photoshop for web design. I’m just quicker at it still than pixelmator. Espresso and Coda 2 for coding, illustrator and inDesign are still my go to apps for vector and print design, though I do very little of that and unless cs5 stops working in my computer I’ll continue to use them for eternity.
Eric Dye says
I suggest you give Sketch a trial run. You can get a few free weeks to try it out if you download the app from their website. You might really dig it. 🙂