Skip to content

Back to Toolbox

Creative apps

List of potential replacements for the Adobe suite. See also this tweet.

The built-in macOS Photos editor is surprisingly capable and can handle several RAW camera formats.

Applications

Procreate

Platforms: iPadOS, iOS (Procreate Pocket). Pricing: one-time payment.

Procreate is a digital painting application for iPad. Replaces Adobe Fresco and, to some extent, Adobe Photoshop.

You can import Photoshop brushes in the ABR file format, and it has its own brush engine named Valkyrie and a Brush Studio. (Kyle T. Webster, prolific brush creator who worked on Adobe Fresco, joined Procreate in 2024.)

There’s a separate app called Procreate Dreams for animation. Replaces Adobe Animate.

Pixelmator Pro

Brush support: it imports Photoshop brushes (ABR) but they don’t work as intended.

Darkroom

Capture One

Affinity

Inkscape

GIMP

Scribus

Darktable

Krita

Blender

Graphite

Resources

Some resources: