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I've been playing around with Adobe design software on their 30 day trial basis. Never used any kind of design software before but really enjoyed it. Unfortunately I can't afford to be paying out the subscription costs of the Adobe software for just messing about with so any recommendations on other cheaper design software, preferably an outright purchase rather than subscriptions. Looking for competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator.
I use iStudio Publisher on occasion, works pretty well for me. Not sure if it would suit your needs or not, but worth taking a look.
Sketch
Inkscape and GIMP are both available free.
Bump them.
Look no further - Affinity Photo and Designer...
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/
Both getting very good reviews and updates coming often. InDesign rival coming next year tool.
Affinity looks good. Have you used it yourself or anyone else on here?
I've installed them both and bought Designer, but they lack a few features for professional use yet. And we have full creative cloud subscription at work so the incentive to learn quickly isn't there yet.
We're watching them closely though as there could be a big cost saving!
For home use they are well worth trialling, as they are targeting the Pro market long-term, rather than the free-ware market.
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It absolutely boils my piss that Adobe have been allowed to establish a total monopoly on an entire industry. There simply are no options.
I paid just short of 2 grand for the last version of CS, yet because Adobe say so, I now have to pay them a substantial subscription every month just to use it. So I'm basically getting bent over! And once they've got everyone over to the subscription model, what do you think is going to happen to the pricing?
Tgere is a desperate need for an alternative. But there isn't one. And there won't be. Because as soon as they start to emerge Adobe buys them out
It's bloody ridiculous they continue to do it. They're a law unto themselves!
OSX or Windows?
bump it.binners - Member
It absolutely boils my piss that Adobe have been allowed to establish a total monopoly on an entire industry. There simply are no options.I paid just short of 2 grand for the last version of CS, yet because Adobe say so, I now have to pay them a substantial subscription every month just to use it. So I'm basically getting bent over! And once they've got everyone over to the subscription model, what do you think is going to happen to the pricing?
Tgere is a desperate need for an alternative. But there isn't one. And there won't be. Because as soon as they start to emerge Adobe buys them out
It's bloody ridiculous they continue to do it. They're a law unto themselves!
noted for ref.
Ah, the clue was in the thread title! I scoured the body text twice looking for the OS 🙂
Seashore is free and will do basic image manipulation:
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/About.html
Not really a patch on photoshop though.
Graphic (Used to be called iDraw until the company was acquired by Autodesk) is a cheap vector drawing package, again, not as powerful as Illustrator but I've found it fine for most small jobs:
http://graphic.autodesk.com
Open Source Mac is always worth a look before the app store:
http://opensourcemac.org
OP, I think affinity designer might suit your needs. I tend to give most alternatives to illustrator a try because I share a similar view to Binners regarding adobe and their way of doing business and would like nothing more than to find a realistic alternative. It's not quite there for day in day out usage yet but it is still pretty good and will probably do everything you need from a drawing package for occasional use. It's not free (I think it's around £40) although there is a free trial.
I'm liking the look and reviews of the Affinity software and was just about to purchase it then seen Nach's post on Graphic which looks quite good too. I think I'll try the trail version of Affinity Designer as I like the idea of common layouts between the programs if I get Photo too.
Depends what you are doing, but I use omnigraffle and seashore for anything I can't do in PowerPoint. The omnigraffle stuff isn't free or particularly cheap, but defo worth a look.
InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are awesome though. I know what Binners is saying, but it's like complaining about Google. Too little too late.
InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop are awesome though.
^This. It's cheaper per month than a Sky subscription and a damn site more useful.
It absolutely boils my piss that Adobe have been allowed to establish a total monopoly on an entire industry. There simply are no options.
There is - QuarkXpress is still available! 😀
And on that front - 10 years ago no-one thought Quark could be knocked off their lofty perch.
QuarkXpress is still available!
Don't mention the Q word! *shudders*
Fair point. At least Adobe stuff is bloody good. And it is great value for money (at the moment) if you just have a subscription now, and you hadn't already bought CS6, so you've effectively paid for it twice.
If you remember when Adobe first introduced CS, it was priced so you'd have to be mad not to switch to In Design. And everyone did. And what happened to the pricing once they had? It spiraled upwards pretty bloody dramatically. More than doubling in a few years.
You can bet your arse that once everyone has switched to CC....and lets face it, they've made it so that remaining on CS6 just isn't an option... they'll start ratcheting the prices just the same. As you would if you'd established a complete monopoly on an entire global industry.
Quark was always bloody awful though. Sometimes when I'm freelancing, I'll happen upon a copy of it lurking at the bottom of an applications folder, and a shudder goes through me.
Oh... but Freehand was a far, far better illustration tool than Illustrator
Oh... but Freehand was a far, far better illustration tool than Illustrator
Completely agree - I hung on to Freehand as long as I possibly could. I still find Illustrator over-complicated and avoid using it as much as I can.
On my MacBook, I use [url= https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pixelmator/id407963104?mt=12 ]Pixelmator[/url] for bitmap (photo) images and [url= http://www.sketchapp.com ]Sketch[/url] for vector images. Love 'em both but then I don't have anything to do with print media.
Well, I say that but I did once have to produce a full page advert for a newspaper once - Sketch was up to the job...
Rachel