Affordable Adobe Alternatives for Illustrators

A while ago, I wrote this list of free or inexpensive software options.

It's time to revisit the list, and evaluate alternatives to Adobe!  The list provided is NOT exhaustive, but several options available will undoubtedly be useful in the long term for creatives looking to escape Adobe's ecosystem.
If you are unfamiliar with what's going on with Adobe, and why you may not want to use other options, read this article.

Several of these software options listed are able to perform other tasks than what they are listed under -- however, they are not
Please read the Terms of Service or End User License Agreement for products or services you are interested in to ensure that the terms are not exploitative.

Please visit the product pages for detailed software information, exact pricing, and to see if it will meet your needs.
Neither I nor the Nattosoup Studio Blog are associated with these software vendors in any way, and do not see any sort of fees for recommendations made here.

Some information has been sourced from EverBlue_Comic's helpful Patreon Post.

General Image Editing


Testing resizing in Affinity Photo

Vector Editors

Illustration/Drawing Software

Drawn in Paint Tool SAI 2 Preview 2019.05.21

PDF Creation

Fiddling with an already-created PDF in Affinity Publisher Public Beta
There are, of course, other options out there for illustration, image or vector editing, and desktop publishing... But many of them exceed the cost of the options here.

Do your research! Evaluate your needs! Look at what's available!

Go forth and create!


If you like my art, and wanna see more of it, you can find my resources at Shooting Stars, or read my comic Linked.

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