Even though nowadays software like the Adobe collection are a lot more affordable with the Creative Cloud option, those of us who like to create and experiment with different mediums still find ourselves begging for cheaper alternatives for image, music, games and video production.
Luckily, there are MANY free alternatives you can enjoy right now. Below, there’s a detailed list of my favorites!
Audacity
Alternative to Adobe Audition
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
Audacity is light and incredibly powerful. I’ve used it several times for recording drafts of songs, since it allows working with separate tracks, applying effects, mixing and much more. It’s also great to record audio for YouTube videos, since it doesn’t take a lot of RAM in the background - the exact reason why Audition isn’t used for that, even though it’s a lot more powerful. Just remember that to export to MP3, you need to install the plug-in available on the website (which is also free).
Also, you can download the portable version, which you can run straight from a pen drive without installing anything. How cool is that?
Want something with a little more kick? Try Audiotool!
It’s a free web-based music creation studio. You heard me. It has everything from drum machines to synth. I recommend checking out a few tutorials for the more complex bits, but it’s quite intuitive for the most part. And it runs straight from your browser.
GIMP
Alternative to Adobe Photoshop
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
GIMP is my bae. Even when I had Photoshop installed, sometimes I would prefer GIMP because it opens a lot faster for simple edits, while Photoshop would make me wait for almost a minute when all I wanted was to crop an image. Don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is fantastic. If you love it as much as I do, you will only stumble to get used to GIMP’s different keyboard shortcuts, but the rest is all the same.
Or if you just want to paint, try Krita!
If you’re looking for something more focused on painting and drawing rather than image treatment, then Krita is the best alternative. It provides a professional set of tools for digital painting - which you can also do with both GIMP and Photoshop, but they’re not really built around that.
Inkscape
Alternative to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
The interface is quite similar to both Draw and Illustrator, but it’s lighter than Illustrator and less buggy than Draw. You can do anything from business cards to complex vector creations.
Scribus
Alternative to Adobe InDesign
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
Personally, I only used Scribus once, but being used to InDesign, it didn’t show much of a challenge. All functions are pretty much the same, so as soon as you find the right window, you’ll know what to do. And again, it’s way less demanding of your machine than InDesign.
Lightworks
Alternative to Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
Yeah, that’s not just a click-bait image: Lightworks was indeed used to produce Hugo, the award-winning film by Martin Scorsese. I’m trying it out right now, getting used to its different commands, but it’s quite promising. Sure, Lightworks has a paid version that allows exporting in 4K and such, but with the free version you already get all of its editing capabilities and it allows exporting up to 1080p, which is more than enough for me.
Blender 3D
Alternative to Autodesk Maya
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
Blender 3D is almost unbelievable. It’s so insanely powerful, but it’s impressively nice with your RAM, runs smoothly and YOU CAN DO THIS. It’s mind boggling that this is actually totally free. I have used it a lot for creating simple models for games, but you can go way further than that. Word of warning, though: don’t get cocky when you start! Blender’s interface is dense and takes some time to get used to.
Are you into game development? Check out Unity 3D!
Runs on: Windows and Mac
Unity 3D also has paid versions, but considering all you can do with the free one, it pretty much begs for you to try it out for yourself. I have quite a few times, using it along with Blender and GIMP to create 3D models, texture them and place them in a game world. Unity is very accessible for beginners, as the UI is friendly enough and there are TONS AND TONS of tutorials out there, including official example projects you can download to understand the engine’s main functionalities.
If you’re wondering what Unity 3D can do, check out these games made with it:
- Inside
- Superhot
- Slender: The Arrival
- And the ever popular Slender: The Eight Pages, which as I found out after messing around in Unity, is almost entirely built with free assets from the Asset Store, with exception of the Slenderman model and the game’s coding. Who knew.
Endless OS
Alternative to Windows, OS X or Linux
Download // Image source
Runs on: any machine that runs Windows or Linux
Endless OS is a fantastic new operating system based on Linux that is entirely free, and you can download it and try it right now if you have a pendrive. It provides a set of useful tools right away for your everyday use, like office related apps, GIMP, Inkscape and Audacity. You navigate using Chromium, which is Chrome for Linux, and everything else is web-based. You can pin websites to your desktop, which is great for web-based apps such as Google Drive, Evernote, the aforementioned Audiotool, and so on.
You can easily create a bootable pendrive to test it out without compromising your current operating system. I tested it this way and it worked perfectly on the first try. After the initial installation, you turn on your computer and Endless is ready to rock in less than 5 seconds.
VLC Player
Alternative to pretty much any other player
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
VLC isn’t known for it’s stellar interface - in fact, it’s so bare bones and basic that you immediately doubt it’s functionality. But you probably know VLC by now, and is so, you know there is nothing it can't handle. Any video or audio file, any codec, even if the file is incomplete or corrupted, VLC finds a way.
Amazon Storywriter
Alternative to Final Draft or Fade In
Runs on: any web-browser
Celtx is also a great alternative for writing scripts online if you don’t care for production capabilities, because if you do, you’ll have to pay. So since we’re focusing on ALL FREE apps, Amazon’s Storywriter was quite a find. It’s made especially for writing, so the UI is minimal and unintrusive. You can work offline, access on other devices and share it with collaborators.
And if you’re feeling confident, you can send your finished script straight to Amazon Studios, where it can be bought by them for movie production!
Google Docs
Alternative to Microsoft Office
Runs on: any web-browser (but works better on Chrome)
I was going to recommend Apache Open Office as an alternative to Microsoft Office, but who even uses these anymore? I don’t remember opening Microsoft Word the past year - in fact, I don’t even have it installed. I create and manage all my docs and sheets on Google Drive, because it’s easier to access, to share and to create. You can also create presentations, which replaces the need for PowerPoint. Oh yeah, and working in collaboration with partners is awesome - you can see where their cursor is on the document as they write in real time.
Foxit Reader
Alternative to Adobe Acrobat
Runs on: Windows, Mac and Linux
Can anyone please tell me why Adobe Acrobat eats up TWO GIGABYTES? I still don’t get that. Even Adobe Illustrator takes less than that. Not to mention Acrobat takes FOREVER to open, for some reason. If you just need to read, most web browsers have built-in PDF reading, but if you need some extra tools, just get Foxit Reader. One day we will understand what is the deal with Acrobat.
Did we forget to mention one of your favorite free apps? Please tell us all about them in the comments and share this article on Facebook to help spread the word!
