In my quest to find the next best Adobe replacements, I embarked on a journey to discover an animation tool that would work for me. While there are tons of weird animation and video tools available, I wanted to find a good one that wouldn’t have such a huge learning curve when straying from After Effects. I’m no After Effects expert, but being part of the Adobe ecosystem has always given me a sense of familiarity with it. The good thing is that I found Synfig to be a great alternative. Although its interface differs a lot, its tool offerings are very similar and as powerful as Adobe After Effects, so I can finally say goodbye.

Open-source offers customization and privacy

Freedom from Adobe’s control

If you’re looking for alternatives to Adobe software, it really sticks it to the man to switch to open-source options. Synfig is an open-source and free 2D animation tool that lets you animate in a whole host of ways.

Although its open-source interface isn’t the prettiest, Synfig’s UX/UI is functional and easy to understand even for new users. It’s pretty different from After Effect’s interface, but that isn’t a measure of whether it’s good or bad.

When installing Synfig, you can choose between the stable release or the development version. This is common with open-source tools and helps the community report back on issues, bugs, or praise for features in the development of the next release.

As with other open-source tools, Synfig is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, giving you a ton of flexibility for how and where you install and use it. After Effects is only available for Windows and macOS systems, plus the requirement of a paid subscription. Synfig is much more flexible in comparison.

Animate in vector or raster

For more control and better results

Having flexibility and control over the type of animations you can create is important. With Synfig, you can animate with either raster drawings or vector shapes, rather than needing to only pick one type.

Primarily, you’ll animate in vector when working in Synfig, but having the ability to work with or import raster graphics is advantageous too. You can also convert raster images into vectors using outlines in Synfig, which is incredibly helpful for storyboarding by hand or digitally, and importing into Synfig, ready for animating.

Vector tweening and full bone structure animation

Smooth animation, no matter your technique

With Synfig’s vector tweening, it removes the need to create animations in a frame-by-frame fashion. Vector tweening allows you to transform one vector graphic into another one through an animated motion — but Synfig can automate the process, saving you time and countless hours moving each anchor point one by one to complete the process yourself.

Along with tweening, Synfig also offers full-featured bone structure animation options. This allows you to add joints and pins to the limbs or extremities of your graphics, enabling you to easily move and animate individual aspects without redrawing the entire scene each time. This works alongside the skeleton distortion layer, letting you animate your skeleton graphics to complete your full animation with ease.

Synfig isn’t great for visual effects (VFX)

It’s not the perfect After Effects swap

Although Synfig provides great alternative options for 2D animation, allowing you to swap from Adobe After Effects for this purpose, it doesn’t have the same tools and features for visual effects (VFX) that After Effects is known for.

Despite being able to animate in raster form, Synfig doesn’t have the ability for complex or subtle animated effects found in After Effects or Blender, such as 3D and animated depth, or smoke, and that might put some animators or visual effects artists off from using the tool. Fortunately for me, it isn’t an issue that would affect the type of animated projects I create, so I can easily overlook this deficiency.

Similarities to After Effects

You won’t feel like you’re missing much

Despite Synfig’s interface differing a lot from Adobe After Effects, and a lack of specific VFX settings, many of Synfig’s features mimic those found in the Adobe app. You won’t feel like you’re missing very much if you make the switch from After Effects to Synfig — and if you’re just starting in your animation journey, starting with and using Synfig isn’t going to put you on the back foot in your journey either.

Like After Effects, you’ll find layers and filters to animate and build your project in a variety of ways. Synfig offers you over 50 layers to build your animation project, which is almost limitless for hobby animation. Within these options, you can choose different layer types too. These include geometric, gradient layers, filters, distortions, transformations, fractals, and other layer types. It isn’t as simple as only opening a new blank layer and building up from scratch. Synfig helps you build your best animated work.

You can use mathematical expressions to create advanced character puppets and dynamic structures within your animations. This is similar to After Effects, too, but it’s one of the more complex advanced settings that many beginners overlook. Linking parameters across various layers in Synfig will enhance your skills and enable you to produce better animations with seamless results.

Synfig lets me continue to animate (for free)

The lack of VFX features in Synfig isn’t a huge problem for me as I never use them in After Effects anyway, which makes Synfig a viable replacement for my animation projects. With vector animation, vector tweening, full-featured bone structure, and skeleton distortion, Synfig has all the features of a solid animation tool. I think it’s helpful to have raster graphic support for animation, although it isn’t something I personally need to use, as I always work in vector format anyway. This free and open-source animation tool lets me breathe a sigh of relief as I abort Adobe After Effects from my workflow.