f_donald wrote: Outside of my day job, I consult for a small firm that specializes in the design and development of training materials for healthcare providers. We will not be moving to Adobe cloud based software and have been in the process of identifying alternative software. This was more of a philosophical decision by the owners and designers as opposed to an economic decision; we actually want to see Adobe knocked down a few rungs to facilitate customer patronage and competition. Over all, and with the possible exception of Dreamweaver and perhaps InDesign, and for what we need and do, we are working smarter, will be working cheaper in terms of overall software costs, are no less productive using alternative software thus far; we are definitely less complacent in terms of what can be done, and we have access to some new rapid e-learning development tools. Pragmatically speaking, there is ample time to transition away from CS6 products (platinum collection in my case), and I would encourage everyone to give it a shot to the extent that is possible. Adobe alternative software solutions will undoubtably vary greatly based on individual needs. I have pasted one of our original working lists below and there are many more options out there. Acrobat - PDF-XChange Viewer, Nitro Pro, Foxit, and Formulate Pro After Effects - Blender, Wax, Jahshaka, and Motion 5 Audition/Soundbooth - ProTools, Audacity and Cubase Captivate - Articulate Storyline or Presenter, Camtasia Studio, Snagit, ActivePresenter and iSpring Dreamweaver - KompoZer, SeaMonkey, Amaya, Flux, Aptana, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, NetObjects Fusion, NetBeans IDE, and Expression Web 4 Encore DVD - DVD Architect Studio and Bombono DVD (we have no had a training DVD request in over two years). Illustrator - Inkscape, Corel Draw, Xara Xtreme, Sketch, and SketchUp Pro InDesign - Scribus, iStudio Publisher and Swiftpublisher Media encoding and basic editing - Sorenson Squeeze Photoshop - GIMP, Xara Xtreme, Pixelmator, PaintShop Pro, Painter 12 and Inkscape Premiere - Lightworks Pro, VideoStudio Ultimate, Final Cut Pro, Avid, and VideoPad Video Editor (ideoLAN Movie Creator and Avidemux for basic work) I hope this helps… @f_donald - that's great - thanks for all the info! I've copied your post and added links for everyone for quick access. Acrobat - PDF-XChange Viewer, Nitro Pro, Foxit, and Formulate Pro After Effects - Blender, Wax, Jahshaka, and Motion 5 Audition/Soundbooth - ProTools, Audacity and Cubase Captivate - Articulate Storyline or Presenter, Camtasia Studio, Snagit, ActivePresenter and iSpring Dreamweaver - KompoZer, SeaMonkey, Amaya, Flux, Aptana, CoffeeCup HTML Editor, NetObjects Fusion, NetBeans IDE, and Expression Web 4 Encore DVD - DVD Architect Studio and Bombono DVD (we have no had a training DVD request in over two years). Illustrator - Inkscape, Corel Draw, Xara Xtreme, Sketch, and SketchUp Pro InDesign - Scribus, iStudio Publisher and Swift Publisher Media encoding and basic editing - Sorenson Squeeze Photoshop - GIMP, Xara Xtreme, Pixelmator, PaintShop Pro, Painter 12 and Inkscape Premiere - Lightworks Pro, VideoStudio Ultimate, Final Cut Pro, Avid, and VideoPad Video Editor (videoLAN Movie Creator and Avidemux for basic work) PS: Please let me know if any are wrong and I'll update them.
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