5 Open-Source Alternatives to Expensive Applications for 2022

Published: Dec. 27, 2021, 2:09 a.m.

Intro

Randy mentions 5 Open-Source Applications that you need to check out right now.

Open Source Alternatives to Paid Software

  • Dark Table is free alternative to Adobe Lightroom.
    Site: features | darktableOn their website, they describe it as a "virtual light table and darkroom for photographers". It allows for non-destructive editing throughout its complete workflow, and also has GPU-accelerated imaged processing. It runs fast as heck in my demoing of the software. It runs on MacOS/Linux/Windows. I have no experience with photography touch-ups. I grabbed a photo off the internet and used Dark Table to tweak the brightness and a bunch of other settings and ended up making the photo look better than the original. This software made it very easy!
  • Audacity is an open source cross-platform audio software.
    Site: Audacity ® | Free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing. (audacityteam.org)In a recent update to Audacity, they improved project loading time, making it 50x's faster! What can you do in Audacity? You can record audio through a microphone that you have plugged into your computer. You can import, export, and edit audio. Audacity even supports plugins such as VST, which could introduce pro-level effects if you purchased them and them enable them in Audacity. When you edit audio in Audacity, you have a unlimited sequential "undo" and "redo". This program is a beast and is worth installing on any computer.
  • Blender 3.0 is a free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering compositing, motion-tracking, video editing and game creation portions of the 3D pipeline; Everything, as far as I understand. Like the other software I've listed above, it runs on MacOS/Windows/LinuxI understand nothing about 3D animation or modeling ,etc. However, if I were to want to learn about it, I could look up some of the many YouTube tutorials and try it at least find out if the passion for this was truly in my soul. I wouldn't feel like a fool that's out of $100s of dollars after buying an expensive software, to later learn that I'm not into it.
    They have some cool show off videos on their YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=92&v=QRqY_20ti9A&feature=emb_title
  • Krita is a free/open source application that allows users to create digital art files from scratch.
    Site: Krita | Digital Painting. Creative Freedom. Krita runs on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. Some notable features are that it allows you to import videos and GIFs as Krita animations. It's a really nice-looking application in my opinion, and sometimes has a Photoshop vibe in my opinion. It even has a built-in recorder to create video clips out of your painting progress.
  • Obsidian is a free knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
    Site: Obsidian

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