Adobe Acrobat vs. Adobe PhotoShop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Acrobat DC is the current version of the well-established document / PDF management solution, part of the Adobe Document Cloud (the other part being Adobe's eSign services based on technology acquired with EchoSign in 2011).
$12.99
per month
Adobe PhotoShop
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Photoshop is the best known graphics product on the market.
$20
per month
Pricing
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Editions & Modules
Acrobat Standard for Individuals
$12.99
per month
Acrobat Standard for teams
$14.99
per month per user
Acrobat Pro for Individuals
$19.99
per month
Acrobat Pro for Teams
$22.19
per month per user
Acrobat for Enterprise
Contact sales team
Single App
$20.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat works hand-in-hand with Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, and InDesign. Anything that is designed within those platforms can easily be exported as a PDF in order to be viewed in Acrobat DC. Where Adobe Acrobat excels is that we can send our final PDFs to our customers …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Honestly, Adobe is the only company I think of when it comes to anything having to do with the Portable Document Format. I have tried a couple other more "simple" apps over the years for specific functions, but they paled in comparison. So much so that I do not recall the names …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat was chosen because we use Adobe Creative Cloud which includes most of their applications including this one. I have a familiarity using this program whereas my experience with others that are similar is more limited.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is the gold standard. I wouldn't even consider other products. The ease of use and output make this product one that I can't live without in my professional life.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Great user friendliness. Big player in the market. And benchmark in these systems and tools.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
There's not really anything I've used before that's similar to Acrobat.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
The ability with this software especially of multiple PDF files management and creation is more productive and the performance is effective and easy usability is cost effective. Data security and integration functionalities are also a big point with this system and final …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I think Adobe Acrobat is better designed, has better and more robust options and is more secure than the cloud services that those sites provide. Acrobat also is already integrated in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, so is cheaper to use it, because in those tools above you have …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe has been the first one that we´ve ever used and it has been established as the industry standard.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
We use all Adobe products. Adobe is the industry standard. I appreciate that they are constantly improving their products.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
PDF readers allow you to access PDF files, but that is a bare minimum in my work and not sufficient for my needs when preparing content, adapting it, or even combining content into new PDF files. I've not encountered any application that works as well or intuitively as Adobe …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Well, each app from Adobe on Creative Cloud does other things. Acrobat is an overall go-to for PDFs; no other app from Adobe does that. It's included in the Creative Cloud subscription.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I found Adobe to be richer in features than Foxit or Soda, more intuitive to learn and more reliable when in use. Both alternatives were more prone to crashes or had needed features missing, which is how i made my decision to go with Adobe
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I prefer Adobe Acrobat to Bluebeam because it has the functionality that I need and because I use so many other Adobe products, it's an easy transition for me. Bluebeam is much more cumbersome and really just has more construction-focused functionality that I don't need on a …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
For now, I use Adobe CC so it's part of that package for me. I have not really had any reason to look at other platforms all that much. I know that Microsoft Office has its own version of a PDF publisher that seems to work very similarly to Adobe. Other than these I am not …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Much more robust features, frequently updated with new features. PDF Expert was fine for basic form creation for non savvy users but lacked all the automatic formatting, diverse importing/exporting, security settings, Adobe Acrobat digital signing, etc. Further they also …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
We did not compare as we know Adobe is the best there is for what we need
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I think Acrobat is technically a smaller install, size wise, compared to PS. I find it really interesting how Adobe can fit so many different functions into Acrobat that NOBODY uses. Do you want to embed a music or sound file into a PDF?
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I have used nitro and abbyy for OCR usage and found similar results. Google Drive I've used for OCR recognition as well. From a usage point of view, I have found Acrobat to have a much more intuitive interface to manage the features I need like editing, page insertion, …
Adobe PhotoShop
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
I selected Adobe PhotoShop over other as it is more useful and convenient then other platform,It helps in giving a pro touch in every images and it helps to adjust each and every single element in a photo as we can manually adjust that how much exposure is needed our how much …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
illustrious program. In this program, your imagination's capabilities are the only limitations on what you can create, alter, modify, and do. Since its initial release, it has added to its restrictions with each new update, raising them to impossible levels. In other words, …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Once I learned how to use Adobe Photoshop, I was able to create infographics of any size. I also edited photographs right down to pixel size. It has been my "go to" software for many years. I have tried other software but nothing held a candle to Adobe Photoshop. I have always …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Adobe Illustrator is excellent for vector designs and illustrations and Adobe InDesign is excellent for layout work of printed materials like manuals. Adobe Photoshop is the go-to program for photo editing and the trio of programs work well together to cover most needs of a …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Adobe Photoshop is one thousand times more advanced, sophisticated and versatile than Canva is. Although there is a free version of Canva, and there are no free options for Adobe Photoshop, I still think that Adobe Photoshop is definitely worth the investment for professional …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
All perform different tasks and integrate with Photoshop. Use them all in one way or another with Photoshop.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Many, many years ago we were using Corel Paint Shop. It's UI is friendly, but once we were trained on PhotoShop and it's robust tools and easy UI, we fell in love and never looked back. There wasn't really anything wrong with Corel, it was more that PhotoShop just offered more.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
I like Canva a lot and do use it for some graphics we use on social media, but Adobe Photoshop is definitely better suited to editing actual images and getting them appropriately sized and colored for our website, social media, print publications, and more. They are both great …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Photoshop is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and all of its products integrate well together, which was a major selling point for me. The level of fine-tuning/adjustments within the program and the wide variety of available third party plugins was important to me as well. In …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
We use Photoshop in conjunction with InDesign and Illustrator. Having access to the entire suite allows us to seamlessly design for web and print.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
CorelDRAW been around for many years but to date, Photoshop is still the king of any of graphic editing tools currently on the market.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Never even considered another program. Adobe Photoshop CC is the bomb.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Corel is nowhere close to the power of Photoshop and I have found that Corel will also not let you convert to certain formats correctly without some loss in quality. The color tools are not as robust and the feature set is lacking. I feel that Photoshop overall has a better …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Photoshop is MUCH easier to use and interacts with other programs MUCH more easily.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
I've tried many Photoshop alternatives over the years and generally, nothing stacks up. I sometimes use Canva when I need something created and don't have access to Photoshop. It doesn't do the same kind of heavy lifting, but it works in a pinch. I think that's the real …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Other image editors I've had experience with are Pixlr, Gimp and Windows Paint. While I personally liked Pixlr the most out of those 3, none of them hold a candle to Photoshop. I've spent more time in Photoshop than the others, so naturally, I'm more familiar with it. It takes …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
I've never tried any other photo editing software. For the better part of 20 yrs it has been an industry standard & continues to evolve to offer updated creative options.
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
Both Lightroom and Capture One also provide a rich, powerful set of features for image editing. However, they are designed for a different purpose -- working with RAW images, and moving through a large number of images quickly. They excel where Photoshop does not, and Photoshop …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
I've used Adobe Photoshop for many years now. Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and learn these other products to find out which I like better. While at home I use Apple Photos and I have tried paint.net a couple of times but due to the availability of Adobe …
Chose Adobe PhotoShop
There are other photo editors out there that cost much less than Photoshop. Some are even free. But what keeps me coming back to Photoshop is the depth of features and the fact that they do usually have at least one new killer feature added with each upgrade. It's a …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Small Businesses
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.8 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
GIMP
GIMP
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Conga Composer
Conga Composer
Score 9.3 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(476 ratings)
9.3
(190 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(25 ratings)
8.4
(30 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(237 ratings)
7.6
(15 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(8 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
7.9
(56 ratings)
10.0
(54 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(9 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
6.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.5
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AcrobatAdobe PhotoShop
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Our experience is when it is the busiest time of the month. We need to create and edit and upload all our pdf. With the create and merge and edit there are no problems but with the upload it is really difficult that time, but luckily there is a compressed PDf inside Adobe Acrobat and made us upload it with smaller size. So I think Adobe Acrobat is the best PDF editor out there.
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Adobe
I use Adobe PhotoShop to do practically all of my business from my home in Turkey. Many customers find the cost of Adobe PhotoShop to be prohibitive, thus they turn to substitute alternatives and illegally downloaded pirated software. Regulations like torrents, sales, and price increases lead to a number of financial issues. Change can be advantageous.
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Pros
Adobe
  • The edit PDF tool is a game changer for our business. There is no other tool that is as easy to use for small, quick PDF edits.
  • Adobe Acrobat makes adding, deleting, and combining PDFs very simple and seamless.
  • The comment tools, and the function to share for my comments with my colleagues, makes it easy to collaborate with my team on the same PDF document.
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Adobe
  • Brush customization. There are many available brushes for illustration, and each can be customized to fit the needs of your specific style.
  • Integration with other Adobe products. It is essential that the images I create be accessible in Adobe Indesign and Illustrator, and [Adobe] Photoshop can be placed and edited easily within those programs.
  • Advanced editing. The possibilities for editing photos [are] endless, with new features being added constantly.
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Cons
Adobe
  • It would be good if Adobe Acrobat could utilize less system resources. I have had crashes due to memory and CPU load this week
  • Quicker load times from a cold launch
  • Easier collaborative commenting for offline documents - knowing where and who wrote what
  • Ensuring documents don't have issues where text cannot be copied before publishing
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Adobe
  • Expensive - It is too expensive to buy Photoshop alone, and hence leading the user to purchase the entire Creative Cloud Package though he/she is not even aware of half of those apps.
  • High System Spec - Requires high system specifications to run the application smoothly, and to use it at its best.
  • Process lag - When it comes to large-sized files, the application becomes laggy taking much time even to render a single layer.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
I bought a perpetual license to Acrobat some time ago, but if the software ever stopped being supported in my version of windows or other solution that makes me need to buy another license I would not hesitate to do so since it saves me a lot of headaches. There are workarounds to merge files and edit pdfs with an online interface but I dont think those are a good usage of time when Acrobat exists.
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Adobe
We get a lot of use out of this software. It's vital for work with production in our industry and has a lot of cross-functionality - creating social media images, retouching photos, editing photos, creating gradients, and more. It's pretty fuss-free in that we haven't had to reach out to support and the program hasn't crashed on us. We are trained on the software (so again, this isn't for beginners), but for detail-oriented designers and creatives like ourselves - it's a no-brainer.
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Usability
Adobe
My overall experience with Adobe is great because because the it has almost all of the tools in one place and it can be used it for most of my work without going anywhere else. Because the tools are available right there in the main interface, it makes it very easy to use.
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Adobe
I've used it for a long time and would consider myself a Pro user at this point. I know where everything I need is, have custom actions set up to make common actions faster, and have my workflows automated so much that everything is easy. Occasionally, a new version of Photoshop will change a common usability feature which will slow things down for a short time before I'm able to adjust, but generally I really like my setup. However, if you're new to Photoshop, it is likely going to take you a while to figure out how you can best use the features.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
The software is readily available and rarely has application errors.
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Adobe
Adobe Photoshop is very reliable, but is never 100%. There have been times when Adobe Photoshop has had trouble opening, but nothing a little computer restart couldn't fix. I use Adobe Photoshop on a Mac for both work and at home on a daily basis, and I would be lost without it.
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Performance
Adobe
One of the best features of Adobe Acrobat is its speed and stability. When dealing with massive multi-page files, having to reload a crashed program over and over again would slow down progress unnecessarily. And expanding on that, having the table of contents generated allows me to skip to different pages with ease, a necessary feature with exceptionally long files. word searches are even more helpful with text recognition.
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Adobe
Speed can be an issue when you are dealing with large files for large format printing or billboards. When working on web images, speed is not an issue.
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Support Rating
Adobe
Because I don't need it. Used it years ago for account management/billing issues but they have changed the user experience so more of that can be managed online. If I have a question the knowledge base or a video that Adobe has posted answers
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Adobe
While I never contacted Adobe directly, there is so much content out there in the form of YouTube videos, Lynda/LinkedIn learning that almost any issue, including bugs, can be worked around (and this method is generally faster as there's no turnaround time involved).
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In-Person Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Adobe
So, I received the training at the HQ and it was train the trainer training. A good time, I spent a week at their campus
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Online Training
Adobe
Easy to follow and understand
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Adobe
Works well with JamF and SmartDeploy. These are our Enterprise imaging solutions for Mac's and PC's. The Enterprise installer is required when pushing out this app.
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Adobe
I took a course so it really helped. I didn’t take the course until much later after beginning to use it, so I wish work would have sent me right off the bat. It would have alleviated a lot of frustratinon
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
There really is no comparison. Although we use other PDF programs, we mainly utilize Adobe. Not only because we find it to be a better program but also because everyone is more familiar with it. However, the other products are implemented for various reasons, such as a feature or 2 that we find necessary to use at times.
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Adobe
Canva is a great tool for creating infographics and it's free with limited options. Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe InDesign are much more suited for creating infographics, however, I still selected Adobe PhotoShop primarily because of my familiarity with all of the tools and hotkeys. There are always workarounds from with Adobe PhotoShop, and I just haven't taken the time to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator CC as effectively.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
The only thing I can think of that may be helpful would be a more flexible tiered pricing options based on usage or document volume.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
I find that many users aren't aware of many features of the software they use, nor may they be comfortable with learning multiple-step processes. For the simplest of PDF purposes (scanning, downloading, exporting), it gets a thumbs-up. For anything involving electronic signatures, meh--causes eyes to glaze over, or forgetting what all is involved.
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Adobe
It seems expensive compared to the free/cheap programs now available
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Adobe Acrobat has improved the security of our documents, resulting in less risk, as protecting documents is essential to ensure compliance with privacy laws.
  • It saves our company money, as the product makes it easier for our employees to complete their jobs.
  • The product assists our employees with providing quality work product.
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Adobe
  • Saved our company thousands of dollars by editing in house.
  • Has given us the ability to do things on the fly and get projects done faster.
  • Having the original .psd files saved has given us the ability to go back and reuse and update photos and graphics instead of starting all over again.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Acrobat Screenshots

Screenshot of Create, edit, convert, and share PDF files all from within Microsoft Teams – as part of Acrobat integrations with Microsoft 365 apps.Screenshot of With Liquid Mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app, users can read PDFs on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. Navigate lengthy documents with intelligent outline and search tools, while maximizing readability and comfort with font size and line spacing that are adjustable.Screenshot of Fill and sign PDF forms from anywhere and on any device.  Collect signatures, digitally track progress, and automatically archive the signed document.Screenshot of With Adobe Scan mobile app, capture and convert documents into high-quality, interactive PDF documents that can be filled out, signed, and shared.  Eliminates the hassle of finding a printer, filling a form by hand, and scanning it again.