Updated October 14, 2026. Prices in USD.
Photoshop alone is $22.99 a month and Creative Cloud Pro, the plan with every app, is $69.99 a month on an annual plan, about $840 a year. Every one of those apps has a free, open-source counterpart:
- Photoshop: GIMP, or PhotoCraft if you want Photoshop's layout and PSD files that survive a round trip.
- Lightroom: darktable, or LightCraft for Lightroom's library and sliders.
- Illustrator: Inkscape, or VectorCraft to open .ai and EPS files on artboards.
- InDesign: Scribus, or DesignCraft to open and save IDML.
- Premiere Pro: Kdenlive or Shotcut, or FilmCraft to bring a Premiere sequence over as XML.
- After Effects: Blender's compositor, or EffectCraft for an After Effects-style layer timeline.
- Acrobat: PdfCraft for editing; the free Acrobat Reader is still fine for reading.
- Audition: Audacity or Ardour.
- XD: Penpot.
The choice in each row is the same. The established projects (GIMP, Inkscape, darktable and the rest) are mature and stable, but they have their own layouts and treat Adobe files as something to import. The Craft apps copy Adobe's menus and shortcuts, try to read and write Adobe formats, and run in a browser tab without installing, but they are all alpha or earlier. For everyday work, the established project is the safer pick. For Adobe muscle memory, files a client sent you, or a computer where you can't install anything, try the Craft app.
The short version
| Adobe app | Established free pick | Craft app | Adobe files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photoshop | GIMP 3.2 | PhotoCraft | Both open and save PSD |
| Lightroom | darktable 5.6 | LightCraft | darktable imports some Lightroom edits from XMP; LightCraft's desktop app imports a Lightroom catalog |
| Illustrator | Inkscape 1.4 | VectorCraft | Both open PDF-compatible .ai; VectorCraft also saves one, without Illustrator's editing data |
| InDesign | Scribus 1.6 | DesignCraft | Scribus imports IDML; DesignCraft opens and saves it; neither opens .indd |
| Premiere Pro | Kdenlive, Shotcut | FilmCraft | No .prproj anywhere; FilmCraft imports FCP7 XML and AAF |
| After Effects | Blender 5.2 | EffectCraft | No .aep anywhere |
| Acrobat | Acrobat Reader (free, not open source) | PdfCraft | PDF is an open format; all of them read it |
| Audition | Audacity 4, Ardour 9 | SoundCraft | No .sesx anywhere |
| XD | Penpot | FigCraft (desktop) | Penpot moves Figma files over with a plugin |
Photoshop
Adobe has no free Photoshop: even Photoshop on the web needs a plan or a 7-day trial. Adobe Express is free, but it is a template and quick-edit tool.
GIMP is the long-standing answer, and version 3.2 closed a lot of the gap with Photoshop files: it opens and exports PSD, brings in drop shadows, inner shadows and outer glows as layer styles, exports PSB and works in CMYK. It also has non-destructive link and vector layers now. What it doesn't promise is editable Photoshop adjustment layers or smart objects, and its menus and tools are its own, so expect a week of relearning.
PhotoCraft takes the other approach. It is laid out like Photoshop, down to ⌘J and ⇧⌘D, and keeps adjustment layers, masks, type layers and layer styles editable when it opens and saves a PSD. Its test suite re-saves 307 of 309 PSD files from the psd-tools corpus with a matching render. It runs in a browser at photocraft.run/editor, free and without an account, and it is early alpha: no autosave in the browser, and not yet ready for daily professional work.
Krita also opens and saves PSD, but it is a painting app first and PSD is not its preferred format. Photopea is the other browser option for PSD files. It is mature and opens dozens of formats, but it is not open source and its free version shows ads.
Lightroom
darktable 5.6 develops raw files from most modern cameras, CR3 included, and exports JPEG, TIFF, AVIF, HEIF and JPEG XL. If you are leaving Lightroom, it can read tags, ratings and some develop settings (crop, exposure, tone curve, HSL) from Lightroom's XMP sidecars, though the result is never identical. Two catches: no build for Intel Macs, and Nikon high-efficiency NEF, Fujifilm lossy RAF and Apple ProRAW files aren't supported. RawTherapee is the alternative if you only need a raw developer and no library.
LightCraft feels like Lightroom: a library, Lightroom-style develop sliders, masks, presets and before/after. It fully decodes DNG, CR2, ARW, RAF, RW2 and PEF, plus lossless and C-RAW CR3 and every NEF except Nikon's high-efficiency kind. The browser version keeps the library in browser storage, renders on the CPU and has no HEIC; it is rated about 61% of the way to replacing Lightroom day to day.
Illustrator
Both picks open the modern, PDF-compatible kind of .ai file. Only VectorCraft writes one back, and Illustrator opens it as plain artwork without its own editing data, so SVG or PDF is often the cleaner file to hand back.
Inkscape 1.4 is mature, opens SVG, PDF, EPS, AI, CorelDRAW and Visio files, and saves SVG, PDF and EPS. Editing an Illustrator file in Inkscape and sending it back can lose Illustrator-specific data, and EPS import needs Ghostscript installed separately.
VectorCraft works like Illustrator, artboards and Pathfinder included, with Image Trace for turning a picture into paths. It opens .ai, EPS, SVG, PDF, DXF and Affinity files and in the browser it saves PDF-compatible .ai and exports SVG, PNG, PDF, EPS, DXF and PSD. About 88% of Illustrator's features exist, and it is rated about 65% of the way to replacing it for real work.
InDesign
No free layout app opens an .indd file for editing (Photopea shows one as a layered image). The workaround is IDML, which InDesign exports, and here the two picks differ in an important way.
Scribus 1.6 imports IDML (and also Illustrator, Publisher, QuarkXPress and PageMaker files), but it can't export IDML back. That is fine if the document is leaving InDesign for good. DesignCraft opens IDML and saves IDML, so a layout can go back to an InDesign user, and it exports print PDF (PDF/X-4 with bleed and crop marks) and EPUB. It is pre-alpha: text can reflow differently, linked pictures need placing again, and the browser version has only five fonts.
Premiere Pro
No free editor opens a .prproj file. Kdenlive and Shotcut are the mature open-source editors, on Windows, macOS and Linux; Kdenlive exchanges timelines through OpenTimelineIO, and Shotcut imports SRT and VTT subtitles and Lottie animations.
FilmCraft works like Premiere Pro and has the best path for an existing project: export the sequence from Premiere as Final Cut Pro XML or AAF and FilmCraft imports it, along with FCPXML, OpenTimelineIO and EDL. It has 93 video effects, about 30 transitions, SRT, WebVTT and SCC captions, and exports H.264 MP4 in the browser. It is rated about 56% of the way to replacing Premiere; the browser build is single-threaded, so keep long 4K edits for the desktop app.
After Effects
This is the weakest row for established open source. Blender 5.2 has a node compositor and motion tracking, and it is excellent, but it is a 3D suite, not a layer timeline. Natron, the open-source compositor people used to recommend, hasn't had a stable release since November 2022 and is asking for maintainers.
EffectCraft is the closest thing to After Effects in open source: compositions, layers, keyframes and a Graph Editor, 306 effects covering all 298 After Effects effect names, JavaScript expressions with wiggle and loopOut, and Lottie import and export. It doesn't open .aep projects or run After Effects plug-ins, and it is rated about 45% of the way to replacing After Effects. What carries over from After Effects goes into detail.
Acrobat
For reading, Adobe's own Acrobat Reader is free and fine. Acrobat Pro, at $19.99 a month, is what people pay for to merge, split, fill, sign and redact. PdfCraft does those in a browser tab: merge any number of PDFs, split by pages, size or bookmark, fill forms, add a drawn or typed signature, comment, redact and set a password. The file never leaves your computer. It can't sign with a certificate in the browser, and editing existing text is only partly there.
Audition
Audacity 4.0, released in September 2026, is a big rewrite with a new .aup4 project format. It opens older .aup3 projects but can't save back to them, and some 3.x features (MIDI tracks, the mixer, macros) aren't back yet, so if you depend on those, stay on 3.7 for now. Ardour 9 is a full multitrack studio; the source is free, but the ready-made downloads are pay-what-you-want from $1. SoundCraft works like Pro Tools rather than Audition and is pre-alpha; in a browser it imports, edits, mixes and bounces audio, and recording needs its desktop app.
XD
Penpot runs in a browser, is free on its Professional plan, and moves Figma files over with its exporter plugin (prototypes don't come across). FigCraft, built to work like Figma, opens .fig files in its desktop app on a best-effort basis; the hosted community browser build can download and reopen native .figcraft designs.
When paying Adobe still makes sense
If you trade .indd, .aep or .prproj files with clients or a team every week, no free app removes that friction yet. The same goes for workflows built on third-party Photoshop or After Effects plug-ins. If what you use is Photoshop and Lightroom, the Photography plan at $19.99 a month covers both for under a third of the price of Creative Cloud Pro.
For everyone else, start with the file you work on most. Open it in the Craft app from its row in a browser tab, which installs nothing. If the file comes through intact, keep working there; if not, install the established project from the same row.