Quitting Adobe: Free Alternatives & Guide

[00:02] coffee. As you can probably tell, like I'm I'm you know, like when you just wake up, your eyes a little bit tired and your your voice sounds extra deep and sexy. Um so today I decided to do just kind of a different type of video

[00:16] because I have been using Adobe for about 14 years now, like since I started my education basically many years ago. And the school at that point had a agreement with Adobe that we could use all their software like the full package

[00:30] for free as long as we were students. And that's a very good way of getting people hooked on Adobe because once you get in, it's very hard to get out again cuz all the software are very similar. If you learn one software like

[00:42] Photoshop, then it's very easy to transition into Premiere, which then makes it very easy to transition into After Effects. This is kind of like the the ecosystem of Adobe is very similar to one another and it's just like it's

[00:55] very hard to learn I guess you would call like third party software which is not really but um like other types of software that is not Adobe related cuz the UI is different or you have to relearn how to do things. So Adobe kind

[01:09] of gets you hooked once you get started and it's it's just so difficult to quit. But I recently decided to swap away from Adobe and try out other software because Adobe they if people look into Adobe like they kind of have these um toxic

[01:25] consumer habits that they can do because they're dominating the market so to speak. Um if you sign up for Adobe you sign up for a year even though you pay for the monthly subscription it's not for a month it's for a year that you

[01:40] this thing. I don't know if it's very obvious when you sign up. Again, it's been like 14 years ago and they may have changed the text a little bit in the contract, but once you sign up, if you decide after, let's say, 2 months to not

[01:54] use Adobe anymore, then they charge you for the full year because you signed up for a year once you sign up. So therefore, you you bind yourself for something that I realized when I stopped

[02:08] my education. I I just finished it, right? I got a job as a marketing assistant and I had to pay for my own Adobe package now. But the company I was We can just kind of like pay your

[02:20] for software you use at work. Like we can pay that for you. Just unsub for your subscription and then we can just give you all the packages." So I called Adobe wanted to cancel my subscription. I was then told that well okay sure you

[02:33] can do that but just know that you have to pay for like like there's a cancellation fee. So that was kind of like a an eye openener. I was like poor at the time like I just finished education. I didn't have like however

[02:47] cuz I I I just got out of the university. I thought to myself, well, subscription anyways, right? Uh and that kind of continued for another many years, like 10 years or something. And then I just realized recently how much

[03:03] money it actually is per year. It is if you pay $60 monthly for that particular Creative Cloud with all the apps inside of it subscription plan, it is $720 per year. That's a lot of money. Again, if you have a business, it might not be a

[03:19] big deal, but for like private people who just kind of use it as a hobby, like that is a lot of money to pay monthly. Like that is three Netflix accounts you're using the software, they're kind of like there's like popups from time to

[03:34] time that that keeps telling you to like, oh, upgrade your cloud storage or something like they just keep pushing uh new things that you can pay for as you're already paying for. There's just kind of like some consumer habits there

[03:46] that I wasn't really that happy with and realizing how much money I spent on Adobe and how much I've spent so far like during those many years uh kind of made me look into alternatives like what what else is out there that you can use

[04:02] that might compare to Adobe. Maybe it's just as good, maybe it's just a little bit worse, but it's it gets the job done. You know what is out there? And again, I just want to say like Adobe is not like it's not bad. Like it's very

[04:15] good software. Like if you have Adobe, then you're pretty much set for most things that you want to do that Adobe offers. Like Photoshop is definitely the best thing out there when it comes to photo manipulation. You can even use it

[04:27] for creating graphic designs if you want to do that. Like there's a lot of things that their programs can do. And I remember that it just kind of felt nice during my university days when I took my bachelor's degree in web development and

[04:39] communication that all the different students around me, they all use the same software. And it's just kind of nice to be inside that ecosystem when everyone else also has that software because it's very easy to share things.

[04:51] It's also just kind of fun to see how in some of my videos, like when I teach web development, u some commenters would point down on my taskbar and say, "Well, Daniel, you have so many things on your taskbar. Like, how is that possible?

[05:04] It's just like filled up." And you'll actually notice like right now I don't actually have any Adobe on my taskbar. Like, I've removed all of them because I don't have them installed anymore. So, with that said, let's actually talk a

[05:16] bit about what I currently use. like what did I find that is comparable to Adobe or at least for what I needed to do? Now me personally, I used Adobe for

[05:28] three different things. I used it for video editing. I used it for photo manipulation and I used it for just creating thumbnails and graphic you know layouts for something I had to create very quick for YouTube for example. And

[05:41] I found three different software that I am using currently that gets the job done. One of them gets the job done really well, better than Adobe, but the other two are kind of like a workar around that works, but you know, it

[05:55] would be nice to kind of have the Adobe software for that particular task. I forgot I had coffee. I'm sitting here with my my dry mouth. Just woken up and I haven't taken a sip of coffee yet. So now the first piece of software that I

[06:09] found that is actually in my opinion much better than using Adobe software is Dainci Resolve which is a video editing software that is completely free by the way. They do have a pro version and it is a company that sells very expensive

[06:24] cameras that are kind of affordable to the average person. So it's like if you want to make a movie but you don't want to spend a million dollars on a camera then they have cameras that have very good quality but you know someone like

[06:38] us might be able to afford basically and they made this product which is called Dinci Resolve which is a video editing software that works very well with their cameras but it also works extremely well when it comes to just like just average

[06:51] use just for like editing and you know any sort of files that might be just an average recording like the one I'm making right here. Um, so this is a software that is actually in my opinion better than Adobe Premiere when it comes

[07:04] to what I'm using it for. So for people who don't know Da Vinci Resolve, basically this is a software that is very famous for its extremely good color grading and just you know whenever you have to make things look good inside a

[07:19] video you can do that using Da Vinci Resolve. Again, Adobe Premiere can also do that, but Dav Vinci Resolve just have like you can see the UI. It's just kind of set up for Okay, so you have to make something look really good. So, just to

[07:32] kind of show off here, you can actually already see at the bottom we have a on what you want to do. Do you want to just like sort out your media? Do you want to edit your clip? Do you want to do something called Fusion, which is a

[07:46] type of effect mode? We can also go into color grading. And then you have really looked into that one too much. And then you have Deliver, which is software here can do pretty much anything that you want to might use

[08:01] over here that you can drag into your clips. You know, you can create different uh just overlay text if you want to do that. You can see some able to find one of the ones that I've been using throughout my videos. You

[08:14] the one I've been using for my videos. It just it animates in and it animates does it automatically. But just to kind of show how basic editing would work, like if I had to do that using this software here, I do have some clips up

[08:28] software here, I do have some clips up here. I can drag a clip into my uh edit timeline. And you can see that it does support multi-track audio. So, if you have uh two separate types of audio inside your one clip, then you can just

[08:41] edit those separately if you want to do that. Uh you can unlink them. So you can actually just kind of like, you know, edit everything separately. And as you may notice, the way that I record my videos is actually I record my screen on

[08:54] one side and then I have my facecam on the other side. This is one big video clip and then I just kind of shift it over to get the screen recording and I shift it over to get the facecam. And basically I just duplicate the clip on

[09:06] top of each other. So the bottom one is going to be the actual screen recording. little bit and I'm going to move it over inside the transform options up here. the different editing. This is kind of like the inspector inside Unity if

[09:21] people are used to that. Like this is where you do all the different settings. now my screen. So, if I want to edit my facecam, I can click it. And let's go where the magic happens. This is my favorite tab in this entire program

[09:37] here. I think the key thing you need to know is that you can create presets that I actually have four of up here. This is for my face cams. Uh I do also have is called a node system. I think it's called a node system. I call it a node

[09:52] can create different types of nodes. And Adobe. Like this is just the bottom next to it and another layer next to it

[10:04] can separate the different types of edits you might want to do. So you can also toggle them on and off and see the differences. Uh so basically here what I can do is I can just have the bottom layer being just the normal non-edited

[10:19] version. I duplicate it and then I might do an edit. So let's say I want to maybe remove the green screen. I can do that. So I can go inside this thing called qualifier. I go into 3D mode which is over here. And basically just drag on

[10:33] green screen. And then you can see, oh, it's actually kind of like working this green screen here. So, I'm just going to keep dragging like so. And I'm you can't really see it removing anything. That's because we don't have a

[10:49] alpha output. So, if I were to actually rightclick and create an alpha output, so we can actually get the transparency working. Then, I can drag from the clip to the alpha output. And then you can see it actually works. Now, it needs to

[11:03] invert it, which we can easily do. So, down here, we do actually have a invert button. Then, you can see I removed a green screen. Again, this is kind of little bit of green going on down there. You can always just kind of like um add

[11:16] the plus icon. Say you want to also just kind of like go over that part there. So, you know, you can kind of like start roughing it out if you need to. But this is basically how you can do it. There's also a way to do it just directly inside

[11:29] the edit window, but this is just kind of how I prefer to do things. Then what you can also do is you can create a another node because now this is just for the green screen. So if I untoggle and toggle this one, you can see the

[11:41] differences, right? Um but I can also go over here and say that well this one is over here and say that well this one is going to be for color grading or for everything inside this node. It depends on how I want to do it. You could also

[11:54] node, but then you can't separate them and edit them separately. So that's just this note here, you can see that if I were to go over to curves, which is another tab we have down here, I can adjust the curves of this particular

[12:08] brighter, you know, just to kind of like fix the lighting a little bit. I can also increase the darkness by pulling this over. So you can see things get a little bit more contrasty. Uh we can also go into this window over here. And

[12:21] I think by default it's actually inside the HDR grade which is for you can see there's some different options here. You can change the contrast. My preferred window is the one next to it which is the color wheels. And in here you can

[12:34] see we can change the highlights, the shadows, the contrast, the tint, you mid details. Uh so make things a little bit sharper which is really nice. So you bit. Now you can't really see if I were to zoom in here. You can see I'm

[12:49] sharp. So that's just kind of neat. So let's set this one to like 40. And then something like give it a little bit of contrast. We have a little bit more difference going on between the lights and the darks. Uh we can also increase

[13:03] shadow lighting a little bit. Uh we can also change the highlights just to give a little bit light to the face. And just like so we now have something that has been edited just slightly. If I want to change the coloring again, I can do the

[13:17] same thing in here, change the global offset, or I can change the gamma or the lift. If I want to do specifically dark, shadow, light, and global, I can do that can kind of mess around with it, get some different things going. But

[13:31] basically, now we have something. And again, if I click this window up here, this is before, this is after. It might be a little bit blown out, but it's just kind of like to show uh like the that you can do it. So maybe something like

[13:43] this might be a little bit better. So there we go. Before and after. But now we do also need to cut this out. This is a face cam after all. And this does not look like a face cam. So what I can do is I'm going to create another node. And

[13:57] this one is going to be specifically for transforming and cropping out whatever I need to do. So I'm going to go inside this window here called window or this tab called window. And I'm going to click the circle which is going to

[14:09] going to go ahead and drag it on top of where I need my facecam to be. Now, the outside circle is the feather. So, it's going to create a less sharp edge. And I want to have it super sharp. So, I'm just going to drag it in. I'm just going

[14:23] to drag it in like I want it to be. Like something like there I think is is is probably good. Uh, from there, I can then go ahead and say, well, okay. So, right now, we don't have an alpha working. So, I need to drag my alpha

[14:36] from my uh what do you call the green screen clip into the alpha of this one and then drag this one into the output. And then you can see I cut everything out. And from in here, I can also do the transform adjustment if I want to or I

[14:48] Again, you can just separate things as much as you want. Um but in this case, let's just go ahead and do it inside the same one here. So, what I'll do is I'll go inside this little um what is it called? If I click it here, it says

[15:01] sizing. So, if I click sizing, I can pan it over. I can then tilt it down. I can see the anchor tag is a little bit off there. Um, I do also want to point out

[15:13] I'm looking that way and it's kind of like a a bad thing when you're doing video. So, I need to look the other way. If I do that, you do need to readjust the the circle because once you flip it, I think I I didn't have to do it this

[15:28] time for some reason, but um it actually works now. So, I'm just going to drag it over. I'm going to tilt it down. And I have something like this. So, now I have a facecam. So, if I were to go back inside edit, we now have this edit.

[15:41] little bit weird. It's because I'm zoomed in. I need to zoom out there to go. And we just kind of tilt it down. So, now I have a face cam. If I go back inside edit, I now have it working. And, you know, if I play it, you can see that

[15:57] editing. I'm scratching my nose there for a second. Good thing I wasn't picking out a booger. Um, but basically now I can start editing because you now have all the things working. Now, something you might want to do is fix

[16:11] the audio because the audio levels are not quite like it should be. Like it's very low right now. So, I can just rightclick. I can go inside and say I want to do something called normalize audio levels. I can choose a preset.

[16:24] Now, I do have one for YouTube. That is so nice. So, I'm just going to go and click it, normalize. It's going to load up for a second. You can see it's actually loading all the audio here. Once it's done with that, it's going to

[16:36] give me some audio levels that is very fitting of YouTube. Now, I can also just go ahead and do a little thing that I like to do, which I think the the normal or the default normalized mode is a little bit low-end. So, I can also go

[16:49] over here to my audio track and just tone that up just a little bit. So, I said plus four dibels just to make it a little bit louder. So now I can just here where I don't say anything. I'm going to mark it in. And I'm going to go

[17:03] over to where I want it to to stop cutting. Click O. And then I can just go ahead and click delete. And then we start editing things. So this software here, like this is very good for when it comes to editing and color grading and

[17:17] lighting. And it's just very very easy to use once you actually understand how it works. Now, it was quite a challenge for me in the beginning because I'm used to Adobe software and I'm like, I'm looking at this. This is like this is so

[17:29] how the UI is supposed to be working. Like, how do you cut things? Like, just editing the the timeline just seems so difficult for me. But now that I learned difficult for me. But now that I learned it, this is by far what I prefer when it

[17:43] comes to editing software like this. And it's free. Like, that's the important thing to point out here. Like, this is free. There is a pro version, but it does only give you a couple of professional tools that you might only

[17:55] want to have if you, you know, use this like extremely professionally. So, like don't need these tools. I still have access to all the effects and everything. I'll leave a link for this software in the description, by the way,

[18:07] people they look into if you if you want to get into video editing. Like, there's Sony Vegas. I don't even know if they're still in business, but like Sony Vegas still in business, but like Sony Vegas was the big um cheap option for Adobe

[18:20] back many years ago. It might still be, you know, something people use, but look into this one cuz this one is just so good. So, now the next thing I want to just kind of show here is what I do when it comes to image editing because

[18:34] best thing out there when it comes to image editing. At least I don't know anything that comes close to it. If any of you have any sort of suggestions that more than welcome to share and I will be more than willing to try them out

[18:48] because it is something I'm craving. I need a good editing software. Um, but what I found is actually a combination of two separate software. I started looking up what are the most popular alternatives to using Photoshop and I

[19:03] got something called And I might have Googled, you know, what is the best free alternatives cuz that's really what I'm looking for here. Um, but is actually something that comes pretty close. It It's not the same as

[19:17] Photoshop. Like, it's kind of feels like using Photoshop back when it was like its early versions. Like, this is this is good, but it's not like today Photoshop level. I think my main concern with is that it looks very ugly.

[19:32] Like, this is actually me having uh put a add-on onto my installation to make it look a little bit closer to Photoshop. Uh but it looks way worse you install it by default. Like it looks like a very technical person designed it

[19:48] and not a UI person. So when you get into this like it's very similar like you can create a new file. Uh let's just make this one 1280 by 720. That's fine. You know you have a background. You can create new layers if you want to do

[20:04] that. I believe this is the new No, that's a layer group. This one right here. create a new layer and color something and then you can start drawing selecting things like cutting things out if you need to. Um, again, it's very

[20:19] then I let go and it's doing this thing instead of just uh doing what I like just letting go. Um, you do have filters. So, if you want to do like specific things like for example having effects like where is it? filters,

[20:33] effects, enhance, highpass is something I use a lot for my thumbnails on YouTube. Uh, basically it just kind of enhances fine detail. It actually says right there, enhances fine details. Um, which is kind of the same thing as I

[20:46] showed inside Dainci, but this one is really good if you don't have a good photo of yourself for a thumbnail and just want it to pop a little bit more and you want to have more detail, you can do something like this. So, it does

[20:58] have many of the tools that most people use for uh image manipulation and thumbnails. But my main thing with this software here is that it's just it's not

[21:11] very easy to use. Like when you try to do one thing in Photoshop, it might take one thing like one action, but when you do it inside this software, it might take three actions to do the same thing. and stuff like moving around elements is

[21:26] and stuff like moving around elements is for some reason extremely annoying and technical to do compared to Photoshop where you just choose a selection tool and you drag something and you can just hold down keys to like make it drag um

[21:38] you know like on a straight line so you don't like um unalign things. It just down and choose the actual unified transform tool which is completely different than the selection or the move tool. Uh, this one can do it if you hold

[21:52] straight, but then you have to swap between these two and it just gets a little bit weird. So, is kind of like, you know, if you want to manipulate a photo image, this one is a very good free alternative. But when it

[22:06] like designs, uh, website layouts or something, I would never use this software here cuz it is just extremely bad for that. It it's it's kind of like it's very obvious this tool here is meant as a photo

[22:21] manipulation tool. It's not a graphic design tool at all like Photoshop can be It's awesome. It's it it does things very

[22:33] well when it comes to photo manipulation. Just don't use it as a Photoshop alternative like entirely. Like it it doesn't it doesn't really compare to that. If anyone have any other software that might be better that

[22:45] comes closer to Adobe, I'm more than willing to listen. Um, but this is like the best free alternative I could find. When it comes to creating thumbnails though, I use now something called Canva. And this is very, very popular.

[22:58] People probably know about Canva cuz this is a service. It does allow for you to do many things with the free account and store up to like 5 GB of something, you know, like storage or whatever. And when it comes to just creating layouts,

[23:13] this one is actually extremely good. Now, I have the pro account and the pro Now, I have the pro account and the pro account is, I believe, $15 a month where Adobe is like $60 a month. So, for all the different things I need to do with

[23:26] the different things I need to do with video editing, photo manipulation, um creating thumbnails, I only pay $15 essentially. Like again you it could be entirely free if you do not get the pro version of Canva. But with Canva

[23:42] basically you can create text, you can create effects in the text. You can cut out backgrounds very easily. If you were to already have a background here you background remover. Uh you can see what I cut out here when I created this

[23:56] particular thing. Uh you can erase, you can restore. So it actually shows you see there's a little bit of hair weirdness going on there. So, I can actually decrease the brush size and just kind of like redraw the hair if I

[24:09] need to. There's a little bit of with the glasses. I can actually erase cuz that looks kind of weird. But you can kind of just like, you know, draw out what you want to keep inside this particular background removal. Uh the

[24:22] she's the one who taught me to use Canma. I actually tried to get into it one time. I gave up on it because the UI is just so different from something I'm used to. So, I I didn't even know how to create text in here and and do like

[24:38] effects and stuff. Like, I was just so confused. Uh, but she showed me how to use it and she actually showed me a very cool thing. If you have a face inside your thumbnail like this one, and you changed the lighting and you did all the

[24:51] a little bit, but then you want to create a new thumbnail. So, you would duplicate this one, uh, duplicate the entire thing, and I want to create a second thumbnail for another video. Um, and I might change my face. I can take a

[25:04] photo, drag it inside where I have that existing photo, and let go, and it applies all the effects that I already had inside that photo. Again, I can then go in, I can flip it just so it looks uh, you know, so it looks similar to

[25:18] that one. So, now I essentially just applied all the effects of the previous really nice little feature that this particular software has. And again, this thumbnails. I think it's really good for that. But basically, it allow for you to

[25:33] do many different things. You can also create boxes like the one I have behind my text here. I can also, you know, take the uh corners of the box and not make it into a circle. You probably can't see cuz I'm like cuz I'm zoomed out and this

[25:47] is already a small video probably. Um, but you can go in, you can round the that. You can change the gradient if you want to do that. You can go inside the the color here, you know, choose whatever gradient you want to have,

[26:00] gradient to work. It basically does all the um graphic design stuff that Photoshop can do. Not photo manipulation, but graphic design stuff. So, really combined together with

[26:12] you kind of have Photoshop if you use them together. It's a little bit of a workaround, but it does kind of get close to what you might find with Photoshop for at least my particular task here. When it comes to software, if

[26:25] you don't want to use Adobe and you want to get into maybe being a YouTuber or know, have a photo editing tool for a business, but you don't have any money, then these are the tools that I have found to be just kind of like the best

[26:39] something and not pay a lot of money for it or if you just don't like how Adobe have problems with it. Again, if you're a business, it's not a big deal, but if you're a private person, then it kind of is in some cases. Like imagine not

[26:54] having a lot of fun money and then you pay for a subscription just to try it out and then Adobe then comes the month after when you decide to cancel your subscription and says, "Oh, well, here's a bill." And you don't have the money to

[27:06] pay that bill. like it's just kind of like a sucky thing I think. So with all of this, I think really like the biggest challenge that I had was the transition when it came to going away from Adobe software into using other software. I I

[27:20] keep wanting to call it third party software, but Adobe is the same thing. Like it's just another piece of software uh outside the Adobe ecosystem, so to speak. It is very difficult when you've used something for 14 years and you all

[27:33] different. Like it's it's a really hard kick to the teeth to try and and having to to relearn how to do the thing that you've been doing for 14 years very easily. Like it just comes naturally to you. But it's worth it. Once you get to

[27:47] the point, it's worth it. The Vinci did take some time to learn. It it does things very differently. But once you learn it, it it actually does things, I think, much better than Premiere does. Uh, is definitely not going to

[28:01] alternative if you want photo manipulation as a free tool. Um, so it can do the job. It's just that it doesn't feel very awesome doing the job because it's not very uh userfriendly. And I don't think this is my Adobe brain

[28:16] for many years. I think this is just like like completely objective like it doesn't do things very intuitive and it doesn't do things in a very userfriendly photo manipulation it worked completely fine. Uh it's more like the graphic

[28:32] design elements moving it around I have troubles with. Uh, and for that I use Canva, which was actually my this was the hardest one for me to to get into like just like my brain had to rewire itself to use Canva because of how

[28:47] simple the UI is and I'm used to like very technical UI design. So my brain for some reason just couldn't grasp that this was a good alternative. Uh, but my wife, she sat down with me, showed me how to use it once I actually learned it

[29:00] after I think about it took me 20 minutes to learn it and then I just knew how to set up things like it was very easy to do after that. So, with that said, I hope you guys kind of enjoyed this video. If you have any alternative

[29:13] software that you might want to recommend, more than welcome to put that inside the description of this video. if you decided to swap away from Adobe 2. I'd love to hear what your reasons were cuz people they swap away for different

[29:26] reasons. Uh for me it was just more of a it was very expensive and combined with business practices just kind of made it a little bit easier for me to like get that last push to to cancel my subscription. Um so I'd love to hear

[29:40] what your reasons are inside the comment section and I'll see you guys in the next one. [Music]