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Software alternatives for Adobe products

In many areas, Adobe products are considered the quasi-standard. For many products, however, there are cheaper or even free alternatives from other providers.

Product overview

Colleagues at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities have compiled a detailed overview showing alternatives for the use of Adobe products.

https://www.lrz.de/services/swbezug/lizenzen/adobe/adobe-alternativen/#Alternativen

Corel campus license

In June 2019, JLU Giessen signed a campus license for the use of Corel products. This license includes software for pixel and vector-based image editing, as well as software for editing videos. The software can be used free of charge by all JLU Giessen employees.

More information can be found here: Corel campus license

Serif Affinty software

The provider Serif is also particularly worth mentioning with its Affinity products. These are products that are explicitly aimed at users of the three common Adobe standard products Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign. In addition to the 'look & feel' based on the Adobe products, import and export functions for the Adobe data formats are available. Affinity is available as a purchase license and is currently comparatively inexpensive at around €75 per product and license.

Since November 2022, the products are no longer listed by the software dealer Asknet. They can currently only be purchased from the manufacturer itself. The HRZ can be of assistance here on request. Please send an email to software-manageIf possible, please state the number of licenses per product, Windows or MacOS operating system and cost center in your request if you already know this information.


A free test and comparison of Affinity products is worthwhile at this point.

Adobe Photoshop → Affinity Photo

Adobe Illustrator → Affinity Designer

Adobe Indesign → Affinity Publisher