I don’t get how we are in the year 2025, most advanced technology we have ever had in human existence… And everything is behind a paywall. Literally everything. Whenever I search the web for a solution as an individual person, not a business or Mega Corporation, just a simple person trying to do a few creative things… Everything is behind a paywall
For example, I want to create a logo image for a personal Tableau dashboard that has a transparent background. Just a struggling person trying to find work and show what I’m capable of making. You know what I find? Everything is behind a payroll. One of the first results on Google that can actually help you is canva! But everything on canva is behind a paywall! You want to resize your document? Transparent background? Paywall. Okay then what if I go to a website to remove the background? There’s lots of them on the Internet that say they are free. Sorry, those are all behind paywalls as well. You have to upload your image to them and then by credits but they don’t tell you that when you get to the website…
Also, editing PDF files… Year 2025, you cannot possibly edit a PDF file for free, and most of the PDF readers out there or PDF viewers have some sort of clickbait this is free! Except that is not free, it’s behind a paywall and you’ll find that out eventually…
I think we are all very excited to see what AI can finally do for Humanity because I am so damn sick of everything being
That’s your first problem. Higher ranked results on Google are either ads or “reputable” organizations (corporations). Google isn’t there to help you, it’s to help them.
Does Foxit no longer have a free PDF editor? Apple computers have a built in PDF editor. I mean, it depends on what you mean by “editor” though. If you want to manipulate the elements of a PDF, that’s obviously an advanced function. Yeah. It’s called capitalism. womp womp.
You might find some useful tools here. It’s mostly a list of self-hosted tools but there’s some web tools there too. https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#software
This might be helpful for what you’ve described https://www.photopea.com/ and you can try searching https://alternativeto.net/ for alternatives.
Generally, it just seems like you need to work on your skills to search the internet for what you need. AI is very helpful but not 100% reliable.
goated comment.