Design Tools That Actually Solve Your Creative Headaches

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The AI app market is flooded right now, but here’s the thing—I only care about tools that truly help me get things done and tackle real pain points. No fluff, just substance. So designers out there, which AI tools actually deliver the goods for creative work?

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Illustrator. InDesign. Photoshop. I wanna say Inkscape, GIMP and Scribus, but they just don’t get the job done. Haven’t found a single AI tool that solves headaches unless you just want a template thing that everyone else is getting with their Canva stuff

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DaVinci resolve added some very nice features with AI and is my choice over Adobe Photoshop and is also 100% useable offline with no telemetry. While closed source I prefer it over Kdenlive since the free version is powerful and I am familiar with how it functions.

Kdenlive has a few AI features but has some ways to go. The paid version of DaVinci has many more AI tools for use and for 295 USD for the one time fee is a bargain IMO.

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If you’re looking for AI features specifically, then one of the most established ones is probably the Generative Fill in Photoshop. I might hate Adobe and would love to never use their products, but in my opinion, FOSS alternatives (at least regarding raster image editing) are still lacking. It is not private in the slightest, and you have to have a subscription to even use the generative fill, but you can at least install PS in an isolated Windows VM and transfer completed projects via something like LocalSend.

Might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but there’s also Generative AI for Krita that supports SD 1.5, XL, and even Flux, albeit not fully.

off-topic

Not for AI, specifically, but I want to put my 2 cents on DaVinci Resolve as well. It’s a very capable alternative to Adobe Premier Pro, so much so that I now prefer the former to the latter. The last time I tried Kdenlive, which was a couple of years ago, it was very clunky to use and prone to crashing. IMO, as DaVinci works great on Linux even with NVIDIA GPUs and has a free version, there’s no reason to settle for Kdenlive.

I commend anyone who has decided to switch to GIMP after using Photoshop.