Adobe’s Creative Cloud is a collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, UX and more. Explore your creativity with software like Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Voted #1 in graphic design software.
Pros:
- Industry-standard and highly recommended by creative experts.
- Complete package with more than 20+ creative apps.
- Free trial available. No credit card needed.
Cons:
- Only available for a monthly or annual subscription.
- Less suitable for beginner or amateur use due to the relatively high cost.
More About Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud Reviews
Find out what each expert had to say about Adobe Creative Cloud.
Jose Gomez
Dan Cruz
✓ Adobe After Effects
After Effects is a powerful tool, which allows you to create custom animations faster than any other “easy to use” software out there. To top things off, it allows you to export animations in SVG format, which loads much faster than a gif or a png on a web page. It also allows me to create custom product interactions efficiently to show our developers how a user will interact with the product.
✓ Adobe Creative Cloud
Of course, I use Adobe Creative Cloud every day (Photoshop and Illustrator mostly), but Figma and After Effects are those two tools that empower my design workflow.
Joseph Black
The best photo editing software in the world must be Adobe Photoshop, right? It’s an easy answer, but the wrong one!
The best photo editing software isn’t necessarily from Adobe! There are plenty of Photoshop and Lightroom rivals that bring very different tools, styles, effects and possibilities for keen photographers.
Remember that Photoshop is also for artists, designers, videographers and illustrators too. There’s a lot in Photoshop you won’t need, and there’s only a finite amount of space inside Photoshop for photography-specific tools.
So Photoshop is great at what it does, but what it does start to look pretty limited. Which is why the other programs on our list all deserve a long, hard look? Many are cheaper, many are simpler, and many are smarter.
Lightroom is so powerful you may not need Photoshop at all, Affinity Photo does everything that Photoshop does at a fraction of the price, Capture One Pro is like Lightroom for pros and DxO PhotoLab can make the results from ordinary cameras and lenses look better than you could ever have imagined.
✓ Adobe Photoshop
If you’re looking for cheaper all-in-one photo editors, get Adobe Photoshop Elements if you must, but first take a look at ON1 Photo RAW2020, Exposure X5 and Skylum Luminar. Adobe might still be the big name in photo editing, but don’t decide anything until you see what its rivals can do!
Here is the list of different software names that’s also a substitute for Adobe Photoshop.
✓ Affinity Photo
✓ PhaseOne Capture One Pro 20
✓ DxO Nik Collection 3
✓ Luminar 4
It depends on the needs of the designer which one he will select, as per his requirements.
William Angelos
✓ Adobe Photoshop
I think that if we’re talking about the best everyone is going to think about Adobe Photoshop. It has all the features and can do just about anything anyone might need to do. It is however super expensive, and for most people it is complete overkill.
✓ Affinity Photo
Most people will just never need to do all that this program can do. For those people there is Affinity Photo by Serif. Rather than charge a monthly fee they just charge a 1 time price of $50. Adobe Photoshop is something you rent at $10 a month. Affinity Photo does +90% of what Photoshop does. So when cost and actual use is considered for me Affinity Photo is my choice for best photo editing tool.
Monica Lent
✓ Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom Classic is still the best photo editing software for the majority of photographers.
It supports a wide variety of camera makes and models, is easy for beginners to learn through free content online, and allows you plenty of flexibility and performance as a professional as well.
The downside of Adobe Lightroom is that the latest version is only available on a subscription model. While it’s good because Adobe regularly releases new features and performance improvements, the cost is higher in the long run for most users.
But if you like getting new features and improvements on a regular basis, the $20/mo photography package from Adobe is a great option and includes Photoshop as well.
Capture One Pro is an excellent photography processing tool, especially if you’re shooting with a system that isn’t well supported by Lightroom.
For example, Fujifilm RAW photos often lose detail as a result of the way Lightroom decodes the files captured by an X Trans sensor. Instead of adding a pre-processing step to your workflow with an additional tool like Irident X Transformer, it might be more efficient to work entirely in Capture One.
Apart from processing certain types of files, the distinction between Lightroom Classic and Capture One Pro is mostly up to personal preference. The former is simply more popular and has more learning material online than the latter.
If you want to own the software outright instead of paying a monthly subscription, Capture One Pro offers both a lifetime license and a subscription option. I’d recommend any user start with a monthly subscription to get a feel for the tool and see how it suits their workflow.
David Jon Walker
✓ Adobe Photoshop
Adobe’s Photoshop, at this point, has become a verb as the expected solution of static visual graphics. It serves as the go to software for photograph editing and compositing multiple images for complex graphics; think movie posters and advertisement images for web graphics.
✓ Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is a program for heavy lifting in vector-based artworks. Designers prefer to use Illustrator to create logos, illustrations, display typography, signage and more.
✓ Adobe InDesign
InDesign is the professional standard (replaced Aldus’ Pagemaker) for publication layout for magazines, books, and presentations. Imagery created in photoshop or designs from illustrator can be easily imported for use within a layout. Formatting text and large bodies of text is its strong suit. These three are the leading programs utilized by designers all over the world, from freelancers to advertising agencies.
Teaching graphic design as a professor at a university, it’s imperative that my students gain an adequate level of proficiency using these programs in order to push the boundaries of their creative muscles while readying themselves for the field. Experimentation and the collaborative use of these offerings continue to push the heights of design to new levels.
Laurence Norah
✓ Adobe Lightroom
Personally for the majority of my photo editing work I use Adobe Lightroom. This is because it allows me to both manage my photography catalog, as well as edit my photos, meaning I can do the majority of my photography workflow within the software. Lightroom is also specifically designed for photographers, with all the tools that most photographers need for photo editing.
Of course, Lightroom does require a monthly subscription, and there’s quite a steep learning curve. I’ve also had positive results working with Skylum Luminar, which is a lot easier to pick up and use if you’re just starting out, and comes with a lot of easy AI powered tools that let me achieve useful effects very quickly, such as replacing a sky in a shot, or adding objects.
Elizabeth Moosburner
✓ Adobe Creative Cloud
As the design department for a full-service digital marketing agency, our team is responsible for creating the assets used in landing pages, ads, multimedia projects, websites, and branding guides. To handle all of these digital mediums, we rely on the versatile design tools in the Adobe Creative Suite — primarily Illustrator.
Illustrator gives graphic designers the freedom to create, draw, scale, and add dimension to high-resolution vector art. From basic shapes to advanced 3D elements, Illustrator helps our agency create pixel-perfect designs for every marketing campaign.
Nicholas Boris
I’ve been using Adobe programs such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere Pro for 7 years now.
✓ Adobe Lightroom
✓ Adobe Photoshop
I started off in Lightroom when I began editing photos for a super car event company. With any of these softwares they can be daunting at first look. However, I quickly found myself navigating through the menu’s and finding a flow that was pushing out hundreds of photos a day.
I attended formal military training on photo, video, design and editing. For these tasks the US Navy provided the Adobe Suite. As I grew as a photographer and videographer I also purchased the Adobe Suite so I could pursue freelancing outside the Navy.
Since I’ve started I have found that Adobe’s cross compatibility has made jumping from program-to-program exceptionally easy. I don’t have personal experience with any other software, however, there are always conversations in my filmmaker group as to which is best. I say Adobe because it’s what I know and I have a work flow where I can push product out in a timely manner. Another artist I know uses Final Cut Pro because it’s what he started on. They both will produce a beautiful end result at the end of the day.
With the Adobe Suite you get a mass collection of softwares that will help you accomplish any project.
Ray Morrone
As the lines get blurred between Graphic Design, User Interface Design and Front End Delevopement most Creative Directors look for designers with a full toolbox of software knowledge.
✓ Adobe Creative Cloud
Knowing Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop is mandatory. But having knowledge of After Effects to create Ui/Ux annimations and prototypes is increasingly valuable.
✓ Cinema 4D
Knowing 3D software like Cinema 4D lets you take your projects to an impressive new level.
For example, a typical corporate logo project may start with the logo being created in Illustrator. Then the work will be imported into Cinema 4D and manipulated as a 3D object. From there it will be animated, cleaned up and refined in After Effects..