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Alternatives to the Creative Cloud

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
May 7, 2013
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With Adobe's decisions to force users to go to subscribe to the creative cloud, I thought it might be a good idea to get a list going of some alternative programs. I'm a designer working mostly in print with some web - anyone know of some good alternatives for these?

Photoshop -> Gimp

Illustrator -> ?

Indesign - Quark

Dreamweaver - ?

Flash - been moving away from that anyway

What programs are you going to look into to replace the creative cloud?

Creative Cloud

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A

Anonymous

Thank you for creating this forum davedunlap1. I think we may be able to initiate a lawsuit against Adobe for anticompetitive practices, their move is uncalled for and hurts the consumer at many levels. Anyone else think a lawsuit would be appropriate?

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patx_willener

New Participant

smishlawi wrote:
I think we may be able to initiate a lawsuit against Adobe for anticompetitive practices, their move is uncalled for and hurts the consumer at many levels. Anyone else think a lawsuit would be appropriate?

No I don't think so because there are alternatives like using bootleg products that costs nothing and can lasts forever.

Is it really worth it to take on Adobe?

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

patx.willener wrote:
smishlawi wrote:
I think we may be able to initiate a lawsuit against Adobe for anticompetitive practices, their move is uncalled for and hurts the consumer at many levels. Anyone else think a lawsuit would be appropriate?
No I don't think so because there are alternatives like using bootleg products that costs nothing and can lasts forever.
Is it really worth it to take on Adobe?

Yes if there were enough aggrieved people were to get together. Adobe and other Big companies going this route need to knocked down several pegs. They should be forced to have Boxed copies and provide subscription as well. There are too many people that can't afford constantly paying 1200-2400 dollars a year for a Product they don't own or have too poor of Internet connection to work on the subscription service.

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Anonymous

Here is a very nice list I ran into that helped us a lot! Options for any business or person!

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7591918&postcount=21

We are moving our entire workflow from the the Adobe CS6 Suite to "Xara Designer Pro X". They have a 30 day demo to try!

We are very pleased with the results so far and its high quality Pro software. We are on Macs so we running the software successfully using Parallels Desktop with Windows.

http://www.xara.com/us/designer-pro/

pigulici

Inspiring

Hmm, this days I was thinking that for newcomers it is bad, I learned how to use photoshop in that 30 day trial period(back in CS1 days), even the classroom course from Adobe take me 2-3 months, so I think with no alternative to online subscription the base of people who will learn/know Photoshop will shrink,and this is baaad for Adobe in long run...

Adobe_Hacker

Known Participant

pigulici wrote:
I learned how to use photoshop in that 30 day trial period(back in CS1 days),

There is no longer trial versions to download. This is all stopped and people have to try Adobe Creative Cloud. The idea is when people start to try the new "Product" then the uptake will pick up.

So no more trial downloads for the most popular products.

A

Anonymous

Photoshop -> Gimp -
Illustrator -> ?
Indesign - Quark
Dreamweaver - ?
Flash - been moving away from that anyway
What programs are you going to look into to replace the creative cloud?

With most of these tools, I don't think Adobe has been all that creative or open about what they've actually offered for updates.

At this point, ( I posted this elsewhere) I'm going to recommend to our company that we stick with CS6 for the next couple of years and see what happens. We can easily last 2 years. It's not ideal but this push by Adobe has really shed some light on Adobe's plan for world domination...Of course that's hype; after all, we're not talking about world hunger or war here...it's a software package...it's just a tool.

I mainly use Dreamweaver, being a Web Designer/Developer. However, for years, I enjoyed the what you see is what you get interface. In some ways, that was helpful and in others, it was a crutch. It was a good tool to learn but not something that was great for really digging into the heart of things. Hand-coding is really where that skill is learned. With all the templates, Content management systems and development trends, of late, an opportunity has been available to make that move to coding by hand. What I'm starting to understand, with this move by Adobe, is that now might be the point in time in which people really start to move away from their safe comfortable safety zones.

Of course Photoshop and Illustrator are great tools, If one owns version 6, it's not like they're going anywhere.

Because of Adobe's move, I think that there is going to be a rapid expansion of open source alternatives once people start to get the message that Adobe is sending...

I think Adobe is basically saying this: "we own you; you must comply with our demands..." I say, "you may be right but thanks for the warning, we're going to start to look for alternatives. "

A

Anonymous

As far as CorelDraw, I don't think it's really up to the task. At one point, about 9 years back, I used it. At this point, I think the current version of Illustrator beats it.

Going forward? Who knows?

God_I_hate_Adon_tbe

Known Participant

I can understand your thinking with most of this, LArtJunky. IMHO, the price tag is just far too high, especially when you can get free packages like GIMP that do most of the stuff (and other little bits and pieces besides) that PS does. Other packages such as Xara's graphics apps can do many more useful things for web developers. It's all contextual and how much you want to spend. $GIMP + $XARA = Approx $100. Adobe Photo$hop approx $600 to $800... Perhaps a lot of this is down to simple maths, epecially when the quality is available in other applications.

f_donald

Participating Frequently

I noticed that Newegg has a couple of items on sale this weekend for those eligible and interested.

CorelDraw Home & Student Suite X6 - $49.99 with Promo Code EMCXRVS228

Corel Painter 12 - academic Version - $39.99 with Promo Code EMCXRVS74

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MyCoalescence

Participating Frequently

Dont do it! I looked into several providers student lisencing. Adobes student lisence is about 95% same as commercial and you can sell your work. Corel you can not sell your work with student versions.

Also Philip, all you need for student discount is to take 1 class online and bam you are an eligible student. Which is why for years I had planned to get the adobe creative suite just before I graduate in 6 months and have a head start but that has all changed. I refuse to buy even a student edition if they are discontinuing CS.

My dilemia people say if you dont like CC get cs6. That is a trash answer. cs 6 is 1.5 years old in its 2 year upgrade cycle which they will not be doing updates for. Why would I buy something that is almost at the end of its usefulness? I will jump to an other provider in 6 months if adobe does not allow a non CC contuniuing solution moving forward. I will go to corel, pay much less and know I can upgrade and that their product line has a future. Oposed to cs 6 which has NO future.

Here is a list of several top 10 alternatives to adobe. Its not perfect but a great starting point.

Illustrator http://www.onextrapixel.com/2011/03/15/10-best-alternatives-to-adobe-illustrator/

Indesign http://www.onextrapixel.com/2013/05/24/10-best-alternatives-to-adobe-indesign/

Photoshop http://www.creativebloq.com/photoshop/alternatives-1131641

I realize no other company can replace adobe in all they do. I am though still looking for a company that provides as much of an alteranative group of products as possible. On these lists there are 2 componies that come up again and again and again. Serif and Corel.

Serif is a high end hobbyist/low end proffesional and the cost is according to its quality. Most their stuff compared to adobe is stupidly cheap. Their free versions are equal to cs 2 and the full version is probably more like cs 3-4. So good for some but not me but with how cheap they are its hard to go wrong getting a few full versions. Also like 2 weeks after you download their free verions you will get emails giving you 25% off any of their products. I have 2 such promotion codes they sent me for the 4 items I downloaded.

Corel is so many ways seems to be the only contender for 2d work to adobe. Yes corel does have many of its products native on mac and the ones that arnt you can use boot camp to use it.

Painter vs Photoshop = painter wins if your using it for digital illustration

Paint shop vs photoshop = photo shop win, but no one can beat its photo editing tools

paint shop vs photoshop elements = paint shop wins, paint shop is really an inbetween of elements and full photoshop but much cheaper and best alternative

painter + paint shop vs photoshop = tie, corel will digital paint better but photoshop will photo edit better, depends on needs

corel draw vs illustrator = draw wins, its has all the capabilities but just works more intuitivly, customizable work space and can do many things illustrator wishes it could do such as grab 10 obejects and apply 1 gradiant over the whole group without needing to make the gradiant a mask!

corel draw vs indesign = indesign wins, but not by much, x6 is their first edition adding in text/layout heavy tools so great for their first attemp and im guessing in 1-2 editions will be on par with indesign, basicly i could not find a single major function indesign does that draw could not do, indesign just had enough small type related conveniences to make it still better

word perfect vs indesign = indesign wins, but again not by much, again im guessing in 1-2 editions it will be as good as indesign

They have other products as after shot instead of light room and website creator instead of muse/dreamweaver and designer a 3d rendering program but I dont know tons about them or how well they match up.

Over all I think corel has a very strong possition. It may not be top dog in anything but its great at many things and I dont want to have 6 different programs each from different providers and have to worry about things like compatability, completely different tools/shortcuts and more. When I go from illustrator to photoshop I even get messup for a bit with how the same hot keys do different things or the same tool works differently. Corel is extreamly good at converting files. Say you are the last man on earth not using adobe. Corel has 0 problem converting its files to equivilent adobe files. Thats one of its strong selling points. Can convert to photo shop and illustrator and many many many more so your customers/coworks/printers may not even realize you are not the 1 man left not using adobe. It does not matter how awsome a product is if it does not play nice with the standard line up. Yes things change but it takes time and till it does the non standard needs to play nice with the standard which corel is. Did i forget to mention corel is giving adobe users the discount of buying corel for their upgrade cost? Also corel is doing 3 pay models. 1 pay and get your cd/download perpetual liscence (which they say they are not chaning anything in the near future), 2 standard + cloud premium 100/year not month but year for automatic upgrades to the newest versions and a few handy cloud features and access to extra stuff, and 3rd subsctiption/cloud 200/year not month but year and like adobe you rent but never own. So they have 3 great business models going. Surely 1 will fit your you. Im like the standard perpetual lisence + premium. They generally do upgrades ever 2 years which is 200$ which is exactly the same cost as 2 years of premium so why not just get premium to get all upgrades early, extra cloud access and more and still have your CD! They are also running long term sales on like 1/2 their products so look them up.

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frankgrimes

Participating Frequently

MycCoalescence wrote:

My dilemia people say if you dont like CC get cs6. That is a trash answer. cs 6 is 1.5 years old in its 2 year upgrade cycle which they will not be doing updates for. Why would I buy something that is almost at the end of its usefulness? I will jump to an other provider in 6 months if adobe does not allow a non CC contuniuing solution moving forward. I will go to corel, pay much less and know I can upgrade and that their product line has a future. Oposed to cs 6 which has NO future.

What a ridiculous argument. Simply because a new version of software is released does not mean all previous versions are useless. They are tools and are only useless if they no longer work.

Adobe has seldom released must-have features in their new releases so I never saw a need to upgrade to every new version (though I did, but only to ensure I was compatible with my customers' versions). For me, all of CS6 will be useful for many years to come. Photoshop hasn't introduced anything new since CS3, IMO. Video editing? Bloatware. After Effects may be the most difficult app for me to replace, but all their others will remail more than useful for a long time and I see no need to replace them yet.

MycCoalescence wrote:
Corel has 0 problem converting its files to equivilent adobe files. Thats one of its strong selling points. Can convert to photo shop and illustrator and many many many more so your customers/coworks/printers may not even realize you are not the 1 man left not using adobe. It does not matter how awsome a product is if it does not play nice with the standard line up. Yes things change but it takes time and till it does the non standard needs to play nice with the standard which corel is. Did i forget to mention corel is giving adobe users the discount of buying corel for their upgrade cost? Also corel is doing 3 pay models. 1 pay and get your cd/download perpetual liscence (which they say they are not chaning anything in the near future), 2 standard + cloud premium 100/year not month but year for automatic upgrades to the newest versions and a few handy cloud features and access to extra stuff, and 3rd subsctiption/cloud 200/year not month but year and like adobe you rent but never own. So they have 3 great business models going. Surely 1 will fit your you. Im like the standard perpetual lisence + premium. They generally do upgrades ever 2 years which is 200$ which is exactly the same cost as 2 years of premium so why not just get premium to get all upgrades early, extra cloud access and more and still have your CD! They are also running long term sales on like 1/2 their products so look them up.

Corel can save to Adobe formats, but without specific features. A lot of other apps do this, too. Corel's upgrading pricing offer to CS owners expired months ago.

Also, I used to work for a commercial printer and they supported all graphics and layout applications, not just Adobe's. This is actually very common. They asked their customers to provide files in universal formats, such as .EPS, and not software-specific formats like .AI, but most customers have no clue about printing so they just gave us their Illustrator, Quark or whatever files and we converted them. To say Adobe products are industry standards is misleading in the regard that printers use them or use them exclusively.

I have always loved Corel and have only recently lost all respect for Adobe.

Tom_Murray_1

Inspiring

Photoline handles 16bit and cmyk. But I found hard to use compared to PS.

Now using Affinity Photo

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frankgrimes

Participating Frequently

I'm as angry as everyone here, but no need for rash decisionmaking. As a professional web developer, I implore everyone here to never EVER use any Microsoft product for creating, editing or viewing HTML. I've seen the worst of it and believe me it's not pretty.

Please, don't do it.

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Marcin_P

New Participant

You can also try:

Indesgn -> Scribus

Illustrator -> Inkscape

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Piem3D

Participating Frequently

You can also try:

Indesgn -> Scribus

Illustrator -> Inkscape

Hello

I'm sorry but it's nonsense!

Have you ever tried to import a 600 fully layered illustrator artwork in Scribus ?

Have you ever tried to import the same file in Inkscape ?

I guess no. As soon installed and tried, as soon un-installed..same thing for xara.

The fact is that Adobe knows very well that actually they have NO COMPETITORS for Big Projects who need reliability.

To my eyes, the only program that got much more things and which does as well (even better) than an Adobe Program is "GIMP VS Photoshop" (and vs Fireworks)..but you have to learn GIMP.

In fact, even in the 3d world, Autodesk has not such an advantage upon the others competitors.Autodesk (Autocad, 3dsmax, Maya, Xsi, mudbox... and much more) tried to corner the 3d professional market.. actually, they did pretty well but not totally because some others famous independant solutions are still alive today and some very well .

For Adobe, as for Autodesk, the problem that could occur in the future could be an "anti-trust" suit but that's an other story

Microsoft paid gigantic fines to europe for much less than this.

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Adam-C

Participating Frequently

Microsoft paid gigantic fines to europe for much less than this.

Yup - that's why I've already written to my MEP about this - all you other European Adobe users should do the same...

mytaxsite

Inspiring

davedunlap1 wrote:
With Adobe's decisions to force users to go to subscribe to the creative cloud, I thought it might be a good idea to get a list going of some alternative programs. I'm a designer working mostly in print with some web - anyone know of some good alternatives for these?
Photoshop -> Gimp
Illustrator -> ?
Indesign - Quark
Dreamweaver - ?
Flash - been moving away from that anyway
What programs are you going to look into to replace the creative cloud?

The good alterative to Dreamweaver is Expression Web 4 (EW4) and it is free from Microsoft.

<http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36179>

Personnaly I have always liked EW products and when version was released, I bought a suite and soon after that it became free. So I spent about £150 for nothing!!!

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

mytaxsite.co.uk wrote:
davedunlap1 wrote:
With Adobe's decisions to force users to go to subscribe to the creative cloud, I thought it might be a good idea to get a list going of some alternative programs. I'm a designer working mostly in print with some web - anyone know of some good alternatives for these?
Photoshop -> Gimp
Illustrator -> ?
Indesign - Quark
Dreamweaver - ?
Flash - been moving away from that anyway
What programs are you going to look into to replace the creative cloud?
The good alterative to Dreamweaver is Expression Web 4 (EW4) and it is free from Microsoft.
<http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36179>
Personnaly I have always liked EW products and when version was released, I bought a suite and soon after that it became free. So I spent about £150 for nothing!!!

Exclusively Windows only.

D

DeadDead13

Participating Frequently

I can see a lot of people migrating to other software now. COREL should see this as their opportunity to crash Adobe's Greed Party.

F

frankgrimes

Participating Frequently

@DeadDead13 I agree. Corel could make a huge comeback over this. PSP has always been decent. Perhaps a little feature-deprived, but perhaps with a greater client base they'll be able to step up development.

That's the one thing that has always bugged me about Adobe. Each new release was never a "must have." Maybe one or two big features, but nothing that made me want to upgrade right away. They like to tease us with videos of great new features, but those feature often don't make the next release...or even the next couple of releases.

Perhaps if Adobe behaved more in the way MacroMedia did and pack all kinds of goodies into new versions more users would be compelled to upgrade more often. Instead, they just take away the software and now charge us for a monthly service, like my water or electricity. And when the month is done, I've paid the money, used the service, but don't own anything.

D

DeadDead13

Participating Frequently

Ahhhh... such a tease some of the features have been. I still remember Adobe's pomp and circumstance of 3D on Photoshop Extended and not stating a graphics card was needed.

Like you, I usually do not upgrade Adobe products unless a new feature does provide some value in my work or my current version is not compatible with the companies I deal with.

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photofred7362131

Participating Frequently

There are good alternatives to PS and Illustrator and great alternatives to Dreamweaver (Coda, BBEdit). The one that worries me the most is InDesign. Years ago I left Quark for good reasons (support and licensing) and am not easily persuaded to return. I believe there are other good page design apps out there but would welcome suggestions from experienced users.

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

There even is an equivalent to Lightroom from Corel called AfterShot Pro.

I'm I am afraid I am stuck with DreamWeaver because it allows me to design by WYSIWYG. I never have been a Coder.

I can insert return to make room for an addition Div Tag. And add an extra room for a column or row in a Table. And all the HTML5 - Rapidweaver, Sandvox, Swift Publisher either tie you to specific templates or just present you with aBlank screen. As far oas Photo editing goes with the exception of correcting for tilt and keystoning affect. I can get along wit Graphics Converter.

I will take funds out of my Savings to Update to Web Premium 6 (Boxed version) But it may be the last that I do. I simply cannot afford fee for monthly Subcription to the whole thing $1000 and over. When totalled over a years time that is more than my yearly income. Of all the web premium components I only need DreamWeaver, FireWorks, and Photoshop. I've never used Bridge AI I opened up once could figure out heads nor tails of it andnever openned again. I didn't even load Contribute at all on my Computer. and I buy Acrobat individually. Because the version in every CS is one or two versions behind.

The would be better off instead of going to cloud is break up sets and sell individual pieces That way they would soon find out what users think are worthless and discontinue them.

They use to sell indivually. but once you buy suites your never ever allowed to go back and buy individual pieces.