7 reasons Inkscape and Krita make the closest open-source alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud (2024)

There is no open-source suite of tools that works in the same way as Adobe’s offerings. While there are great individual open-source alternatives for creative software, without a cloud suite system, you’ll have to download many programs to fill the gaps. This being said, I do believe using just Krita and Inkscape can offer you enough creative support to be the best open-source alternative for almost all of your Adobe-like needs.

7 Krita and Inkscape are both free

Open-source software with no barrier to entry

The best reason both Krita and Inkscape can become your Adobe replacements is that they’re both free to use. Both software are open-source, although they accept donations for development, they are free to be used by anyone. They’re not bloatware, so they don’t take up much room on your computer system either.

When comparing the zero-cost Krita and Inkscape with Adobe Creative Cloud, which costs around $60 for a professional individual license, budget can be a great motivation to trial these alternatives.

Furthermore, the community behind these open-source projects is welcoming and helpful. It doesn’t feel like a barrier to entry, whereas Adobe products can feel intimidating since they are the most well-known offerings and the industry anticipates some baseline expertise.

6 Animate in Krita

You could replace Photoshop and After Effects’ animation tools

Although you can animate directly in Krita using its animation timeline — and you could also create vector layers for export from Inkscape and animate them elsewhere — it isn’t going to be a full replacement for Adobe’s major animation offerings. Also, Krita certainly doesn’t replace Adobe’s video tools.

However, for basic GIF or animation creation, Krita does offer enough to replace Photoshop’s animation timeline and any basic animations you might do using Adobe After Effects.

Alternative for Illustrator’s digital art

Inkscape is primarily a vector-based tool, so SVGs are the best format you could work with. SVG stands for scalable vector graphic and is a digital file type made for vectors only, allowing infinite scalability without pixelation. Using SVGs is one of the best benefits of vector-based design compared with raster-based design.

You can also work with vectors in Krita, although that is not the main format it's designed for. Krita offers vector layers and brushes among its other raster tools.

4 Inkscape is great for digital or path-based design

Digital is where Inkscape shines

Inkscape really shines when it comes to digital design and screen design. It doesn’t offer CMYK color support, making it a null option for print-based design. But in a world where more of our designed elements remain screen-based only, that’s not a bad thing if you’re making the switch from Adobe to Inkscape.

If you do need CMYK color options for printing designs, Krita has CMYK support built-in. The default will be set to RGB, though, so ensure you make the switch to a CMYK color profile before you start your design.

3 Variety of file types and formats available

More options in creative design

Using both Krita and Inkscape together, you’ll have access to a large variety of import format options as well as export and saving file options. With SVG and PNG being the most popular filetypes to use, open, edit, and save across both programs, you won’t need many other options, although more are available.

Krita has its own file type exclusively for use within Krita: .KRA. This saves all elements of an image that can be edited or created using the software. Most other applications cannot open a .KRA file, and you cannot upload .KRA files to certain applications like Twitter/X, for example.

You can open some Adobe-based file types in Krita and Inkscape, but there are some limitations. You can open a PDF file in both programs; however, you cannot edit them with the same fluidity as you might using InDesign or Acrobat.

Largely, though, you won’t have many issues with saving your Krita or Inkscape files in the formats you’ll require. JPEG, PNG, SVG, are available in both programs, and GIF is also available in Krita. Krita offers more audio and video saving and importing options too.

More variety and power than Photoshop

Krita is a great Photoshop alternative and one of the best reasons for this is its brush library and brush engine power. Not only is the library itself huge, but the variations of brush type overshadow Photoshop’s offerings.

Krita offers both raster-based and vector-based brushes, so you can have textures of many types, along with scalability and flexibility. The brush engine in Krita is great too, offering you the power and technology to use the brushes quickly and with great precision.

Inkscape also offers a large original filter library for various uses. Although Photoshop has a filter library and the additions of neural filters with the AI and ML technology advancements, Inkscape’s original library stays more true to what creative software should offer users.

1 Stable Diffusion Generative AI plugin for Krita

Most open-source tools don’t have AI

There aren’t any built-in AI features in either Krita or Inkscape like you’d expect to find across the Adobe Creative Cloud. But using community-driven GitHub, there is a Stable Diffusion plugin available to use in Krita.

Using this plugin, you can use Stable Diffusion’s AI technology to in-paint or out-paint areas of an image within Krita. This effectively allows you to generatively fill or generatively remove areas of an image, similar to Photoshop’s Generative Fill tool.

It’s not a perfect replacement, but, given the fact that most open-source creative tools have zero AI functions, it’s nice to have the option. However, most people choosing to use open-source software don’t particularly like using AI. The choice is yours.

The closest open-source Creative Cloud suite there is

While using Krita with Inkscape as a Creative Cloud alternative isn’t the perfect solution — there is a lot missing compared to the true Adobe Creative Cloud — it makes a good alternative if you wish to avoid Adobe. Inkscape offers all you need for vector-based design and illustration, with large format support and a simple-to-use interface. Krita offers almost everything else to fill in the gaps of most Adobe software, including raster-based design, some vector support, animation, video, and audio tool options. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good if you're looking for open-source alternatives to Creative Cloud.

• 

  Inkscape

  See at Inkscape

• 

  Krita

  See at Krita