Adobe in the past week has gotten under fire for its new Terms of Service agreement which states that they will monitor your use of Adobe software, the content that you use in it, perhaps on your computer and cloud services as well and claim it as their own to train their AI model. This was poorly received and rightfully so. There was also no way to continue using the application without agreeing to these one-sided terms which made Adobe software, essentially ransomware AND spyware. Likewise, when people were cancelling their subscription, Adobe had made it incredibly hard to cancel, hiding links behind many layers, dropping calls/chats from customers and even charging customers a $20 cancellation fee!

Adobe since has released a statement saying "we won't ACTUALLY do that, but it's there for legal reasons. Just trust me brah!" Riiiight... Sure buddy, like we trust you after what you pulled and this isn't the first time they try to pull a fast one. SO, what are your options now?

Note: None of these links have affiliate IDs, they go straight to the source. :)

Freeware:

Krita - https://krita.org/en/

Krita is a open source, free to use (even professionally) art application. It's great for drawing, painting etc... They rely on Donations to keep going but you're not required to donate to use their application. They have been around for about 25 years!

Gimp - https://www.gimp.org/

Gimp is very bare-bone, you can use it even on Linux. It's the go-to for most people. It does an ok job but shines most for its ability to deal with animated gifs. If you don't want to buy anything, Gimp is the best in the freeware world.

Inkscape - https://inkscape.org/

Similar to Krita, this is a open source, free to use art application for drawing, painting etc... Think of it like adobe illustrator if you will. They also rely on optional donations.

Audacity - https://www.audacityteam.org/

I use this one quite a bit. It's similar to Adobe Audition but free! It's not anywhere as good out of the box but it's close enough to warrant the move. I like it, there are also plugins you can install for it if you look for them.

Raw Therapee - https://www.rawtherapee.com/

The free, open source alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Available for Linux, Mac and Windows!

Paid:

Affinity - https://affinity.serif.com

Cost: 1 payment, depends what you want. Up to $89 for the whole suite which includes both PC and Mobile editions.

This is the next best thing to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator but guess what? You have it all! Adobe did not want to combine Illustrator inside Photoshop because it would mean they couldnt' charge you to subscribe to two applications. But Affinity does this with Affinity Designer 2. Both Illustrator and Photoshop are included and it's so great, there are many tools that are in it that I wish Photoshop had. It still supports Blending Options and there are ways to make it look very close to how Photoshop looks like so you don't have to worry so much about getting used to a new UI. Most people have jumped to Affinity from Adobe and what's more amazing is that you just buy it once and the price is very modest! I highly recommend. Oh and yes, you can still use your old PSD files, although it might not always carry over all the information due to a difference in features. So far, I'm loving it so much!

Davinci Resolve - https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Cost: 1 payment of $295 but there is a free edition

This is the Adobe Premier / After Effects alternative that everyone has been loving for some time now. It's quite amazing, and you can even install AI tools as well. Davinci is also being used in Hollywood these days which is a big change considering Adobe used to be #1. Congratulations to them, I'm happy to see there are stronger competitors in the field.

Conclusion:

I hope this list is helpful for some of you wondering how you can get out of using Adobe. These are a few solutions, but if anyone here would like to suggest more, I would encourage you to do so.

On a side note, I have heard that you can play BDO using Linux now using Proton after they had moved to xigncode, so if you have been wanting an excuse to try moving to linux, it's a great time to do so since Microsoft also has been forcefully implementing Recall into Windows 11 OS. Enjoy!

Extremely helpful, didn't know Raw Therapee, need to try it. Thanks

Paint.NET - https://getpaint.net

Image and Photo editing software. Started as a student project to replace paint.  You can get it for free from the site or by pay a little amount to get it from windows store. 

Paint.NET is the GOAT. With plugins you have cross-compatability with .psd Photoshop files, Gimp files and you can animate in .apng format which is superior to .gif due to having all the benefits of png without the limitations of gif.