I finally broke free of Adobe’s tool stranglehold over the last year, and it’s been one of the most liberating decisions I’ve made. After years of costs for the subscription and feature bloat and a no replacement for CS6 that I purchased more than a decade ago. For video editing In 2021, I discovered powerful alternative that offer professional grade capabilities without the monthly fees. DaVinci Resolve Studio . I used the free version for a few years and purchased a license in 2024 that has became my video editing powerhouse, delivering editing tools for a one-time purchase that cost me less than two months of Adobe Premiere Pro.
For my design work, I moved to the Serif suite , where Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher provide precision and vector mastery that rivals Photoshop and Illustrator, with the added benefit of actual ownership rather than perpetual rental.
The only hold out is a pdf tool. I used to use Foxit PDF for a long time and switched to Sumatra PDF . The real game-changer in my workflow came from embracing self-hosted solutions that give me complete control. I set up Stirling PDF on my own server, which changed my document processing with web based interface that runs entirely on my hardware. No cloud dependencies, just pure functionality and it works really well. This with my own set of scripts in Python pypdf library for custom automation and batch processing, I can create sophisticated PDF workflows that skipped the Adobe Acrobat subscription. This self hosted services make sure that the creative tools remain mine, immune to sudden feature removals, price hikes, or service discontinuations.