Replacing Adobe

[etherealfocus]

Just thought it'd be useful to have a list of freeware replacements for Adobe apps. I'm dumping Adobe where possible; here's what I've got so far:

Photoshop - GIMP
Illustrator - Inkscape
Dreamweaver - Notepad++ (or Firebug, or just about any HTML editor + a web browser... Dreamweaver blows)
InDesign - ???
Flash - ???
Fireworks - FastStone for batch processing, ??? for other functionality
Premiere - AVIdemux
Acrobat - ??? There are other paid PDF editors, but no decent free ones I can find

Summary: GIMP and Inkscape are really poor replacements for Ps and Ai. GIMP is technically powerful but hindered by a godawful inconsistent clunky interface that probably has some underlying logic, but completely ignores standard Windows/Ps UI guidelines. Inkscape is probably about as easy as Ai, but seems far less powerful. Dreamweaver is a joke, no problem replacing it. I've heard that AVIdemux is good but haven't tried it yet personally. I only use Premiere to edit lightweight product videos maybe once a week on average; haven't gotten around to switching it up yet.

Note: This is just my personal experience as a semi-competent amateur. I'm good enough to be dangerous in Adobe apps but I'm not even close to an expert in any of them. Input from more skilled designers would be awesome.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

For acrobat reader, i think sumatra pdf is a nice basic one.

I heard Nitro PDF has a pretty good feature set to replace acrobat pro.

 

[MrChad]

Paint.NET is a nice free Photoshop alternative, assuming you only need basic features. GIMP is probably closer to the full PS feature set.

 

[lxskllr]

I like Evince for a larger PDF reader.

Seamonkey has web dev tools. I don't know how good it is, but it's worth considering. It's the full featured Mozilla suite of old, so it's largely compatible with Firefox, and it's addons. It also does mail, and chat.

Flash has no reasonable alternative. There's some replacements on GNU/Linux, but they're largely sub par.

Scribus for InDesign, but I don't have personal experience.

 

[etherealfocus]

Seems to me like one of the weaknesses of Adobe apps is that everything is kind of a unitasker. Premiere is utter crap for audio editing - maybe I'm just a noob, but as far as I can tell there isn't even a way to set the length of audio clips precisely. When I put an audio track on a video, for example, I want to cut it off exactly between beats in music or after a word is done but before the speaker takes a breath. Gotta pop into an audio editor because Premiere gives no fine-grain control (again - or I'm a noob).

Ditto for the other apps - it should be possible to get vector and bitmap editing from the same app. Maybe bitmaps need a separate format and maybe they need to be given a slightly different toolbar... but there's no reason Ps and Ai couldn't be combined. Maybe vector documents in PsAi would get a bold title or something. Adobe won't do it because it loves market segmentation, of course... but I'd love to see a FOSS project take it on.

Add quality basic audio editing to Avidemux, bitmap editing to Inkscape/vector editing to Paint.net/GIMP, export-to-HTML/CSS option (and suitable web tools) for InDesign/Scribus, etc. It'd simplify the whole process especially for casual-intermediate designers like myself, and offer something original that Adobe doesn't rather than just a subset of Adobe features in a variety of clunky, inconsistent interfaces that were largely designed for Linux first and ported to Windows as an afterthought or with clear preference for Linux users on Windows that want their apps to behave like they do on Linux.

 

[Stone Rain]

Google Documents can create PDF's. Offline, Sumatra PDF works well.

 

[homercles337]

Maybe bitmaps need a separate format and maybe they need to be given a slightly different toolbar... but there's no reason Ps and Ai couldn't be combined.

While i would love to see a combined bitmat/vector editor, the difficulty is in the underlying data models not being compatible. In PS everything is a pixel, in AI everything is a point. Mathematically, these are worlds apart.

 

[colonelciller]

Fireworks ---> I find it to be a pretty terrible program and not worth replacing... but maybe I don't know of a good use for it. What do you use it for?

Illustrator --> CorelDraw. Not free in price nor is it free as in no-spying but it a very capable alternative to Illustrator. Whatever you do don't upgrade to the latest "patch" or sign up for "Your Free Corel Account!"... because in doing so you go from a program that can be used pretty much forever as you move from computer to computer... to a locked down POS that dies after a certain # of installs (or computers or whattnot).

 

[colonelciller]

While i would love to see a combined bitmat/vector editor, the difficulty is in the underlying data models not being compatible. In PS everything is a pixel, in AI everything is a point. Mathematically, these are worlds apart.

I have to agree... the toolsets alone are worlds apart. For minor things like cropping/rotating images sure (but those abilities are already in many vector editing suites), but for hard core photo-editing I don't see a merger happening.

 

[etherealfocus]

1. I use Fireworks for the batch processor. That's about it. Comes in handy when I need to resize/rename a zillion images. I've heard some people are happy with it for image editing and web slicing but I've never found a good use case for image editing over Ps/Ai and I don't use slices at all.

2. Vector and bitmap images are worlds apart, but that's no reason they can't be handled by the same program. As I suggested, PsAi could just show one toolset for vector and a different one for bitmap, and offer options for combining them in one file. There are already vector tools in Ps and bitmap tools in Ai (basic though they are). They probably can't be fully integrated, but a content-sensitive toolset shouldn't be hard to do, and at very least they could go vector/bitmap by layer instead of by document.

My guess is the biggest reason Ps and Ai aren't integrated is market segmentation. Adobe gets more money selling two $500 programs than a single $1000 program.

 

[kleinkinstein]

For acrobat reader, i think sumatra pdf is a nice basic one.

I heard Nitro PDF has a pretty good feature set to replace acrobat pro.

Yes! And then Scribus for Indesign, Aptana Studio for Dreamweaver. As already mentioned, Flash is a necessary evil with no real substitute. You have the other alternatives nailed.

 

[Shephard]

um who the heck ever used Dreamweaver seriously? Way better options over that expensive crap.

 

[etherealfocus]

I was hoping to keep all the Adobe alternatives FOSS if possible, but I have heard good things about Aptana. I used to demo version a while back but never put any serious time into it. Notepad++ handles my modest coding needs just fine.

And yeah... I was a bit annoyed when Dreamweaver came installed on the first machine the company bought for me when I was hired. I'm no code ninja, but Dw is just insulting. Like putting training wheels on good motorcycle.

 

[RossMAN]

What's the best free .pdf software to enter text on a rebate form?

 

[John Connor]

For .PDFs I chose Foxit reader. For basic photo editing I use Photofiltre.