Alternatives to the Creative Cloud

[davedunlap1]

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?

[wkjeiwoi]

According to David Pogue's recent article on this in the NYT, they've already factored in and accepted the people who will be angry about this move, and written them off.

Time will tell how that turns out.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

Oh well!  Gues that's the end of that argument...

Still, nice opening for Corel!

[Adobe_Hacker]

mandelbrot wrote:

Still, nice opening for Corel!

I doubt it.  Corel is like Linux operating system.  People like it but they don't use it for everyday purposes.

Corporations like Microsoft and Adobe will be there whatever happens and Google for the search engine technology.

[frankgrimes]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

According to David Pogue's recent article on this in the NYT, they've already factored in and accepted the people who will be angry about this move, and written them off.

Time will tell how that turns out.

I'm sure of this. A change like this is significant and Adobe wouldn't make it without first considering how much business they could potentially lose. After maybe five entire minutes of consideration about losing the infrequent updaters, hobbyists, individuals and small businesses, they decided it would be okay to cater to only those who really don't care about another $50 or more every month. Also, since the cost of using their software has, for all practical purposes, doubled, they could afford to lose half their sales and remain even.  No way did they lose half their business. They're still making money like oil companies and don't give a flying fig how they do it or who suffers from it.

[wkjeiwoi]

what I don't personally know about is the multi-seat firms' costs of the CC...

is it going to be $50/mo more? or $50/mo more per seat? That probably isn't even a blip for many firms. It might sting a little for the small/mid-sized ones, but not a lethal sting.

5 seats @ $50 = $250/mo = $3000/year...cost of a work station...or maybe clip the ends off somebody's raise or salary?

10 seats = $30,000/year.  To a guy like me, that's serious coin.

From what I've read on the forums of open-source image and layout apps, users in large parts of the world blissfully live without it, content to use whatever their open source app is...people doing "real" work, and not necessarily on Mac or PC but on Linux.

Things seem so tightly sewn shut in this country I don't know  how likely people/firms can push away from one platform and resume on another. software learning curve for one thing, legacy files for another.

[frankgrimes]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

what I don't personally know about is the multi-seat firms' costs of the CC...

is it going to be $50/mo more? or $50/mo more per seat? That probably isn't even a blip for many firms. It might sting a little for the small/mid-sized ones, but not a lethal sting.

5 seats @ $50 = $250/mo = $3000/year...cost of a work station...or maybe clip the ends off somebody's raise or salary?

10 seats = $30,000/year.  To a guy like me, that's serious coin.

From what I've read on the forums of open-source image and layout apps, users in large parts of the world blissfully live without it, content to use whatever their open source app is...people doing "real" work, and not necessarily on Mac or PC but on Linux.

Things seem so tightly sewn shut in this country I don't know  how likely people/firms can push away from one platform and resume on another. software learning curve for one thing, legacy files for another.

I do a lot of web development for a huge university and they inquiring about enterprise licensing. No one at the U is happy about this.  Academic discount or not, it's still a PITA for everyone there and more expensive.

[wkjeiwoi]

I would be very interested to know how it turns out for you and the University, frankgrimes.

for the sake of conversation, if your boss/client called a meeting with you today and said, "How would you feel and how would it impact our work if, on Monday morning, you sat down in front of a Linux box loaded with Gimp, Inkscape etc.?"

Cold sweat for you, or closer to "Bring it on?"

[frankgrimes]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

I would be very interested to know how it turns out for you and the University, frankgrimes.

for the sake of conversation, if your boss/client called a meeting with you today and said, "How would you feel and how would it impact our work if, on Monday morning, you sat down in front of a Linux box loaded with Gimp, Inkscape etc.?"

Cold sweat for you, or closer to "Bring it on?"

I'm sure they'll strike a deal with Adobe on this. The U has lots of money and Adobe wants some of it.

On the desktop I'm given to use, it's loaded with Adobe software and for a while I used it, but now I use Ultraedit exclusively for editing (gave up on Dreamweaver a long time ago). I still have to use PS because the designs I get are given to me as PDFs, but I'd be just as comfortable using anything from Corel. Haven't used Gimp in years, but in this case it would probably work fine.

For my other clients they don't care what I use. In fact, they don't even know what I use. I'm happy Corel offered their upgrading pricing to CS4+ owners. I've been a fan of theirs since their Canadian roots and look forward to the new versions.

[frankgrimes]

Also, looking at products from companies like onOne and Topaz Labs, who needs photoshop anymore? Use can use their software as standalone apps or as plugins. I've read Corel products can use PS plugins as well, so, really, that negates Adobe further IMO.

[wkjeiwoi]

Good points..I'll have to read up on those companies...

Also, Gimp, Inkscape, iDraw, Sketch, Pixelmator, Acorn all save and open PSD files or PSD-friendly formats.

Pixelmator for Mac users is of particular note in that it gets most of its business done using CoreImage components built right into the OS X.. not to belittle the excellent Pixelmator developers*, but it's almost as though Pixelmator is a very polished front end for image-manipulation elements which are just sitting there under the hood...waiting to be tapped into..

*...who, IMHO, do a superlative job of making their app both feature-rich and bloat-free.

[frankgrimes]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

...bloat-free.

Yeah. PS has really become bloatware. I still can't believe they added video editing to that.

[wkjeiwoi]

yer kiddin'!!!

PS CS6??

jeepers...

[frankgrimes]

Actually, I think it goes back to cs4 at least in a limited capacity. I've never used it because I have real editing software.

[Craig Curtis]

from what I see, yes - $ 50 PER SEAT. And that's the discounted rate. It is normally $79. I'm a small shop and would only need two seats, but that $140 a month. And I don't need all the other apps (or the useless 100GB cloud drive)...

[quenton8]

If you only need 2 seats, and if you only need a single app???  Then its $29 each.

[wkjeiwoi]

but that's the rub...most people are going to need 3, such as photoshop, illustrator and InDesign..perhaps acrobat pro

or...

photoshop illustrator and dreamweaver..

there should be pricing for people who are between needing 1 and All apps.

Like others, it doesn't matter to me if they include 20 more apps or 30 or 468, if I don't need them. I'd rather have some reasonable per-app fee or a bundle, as they did before.

Design Deluxe

Design Premium

Design Essentials

could be some of the packages..

[frankgrimes]

I'm confident the pricing tier was carefully planned to make sense to pay for more than you need than exactly what you need. Something like $10/app would make sense. Just add the apps you want like pizza toppings.

This is exactly why I don't have cable or dish TV. I'd pay $100/month for the 5 or so channels I'd actually watch.

[Adobe_Hacker]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

Time will tell how that turns out.

There will be a replacement for CS6 for the desktop but not until next year (or in 18 months time).  The new package won't give updates free of charge unless you buy them as downloads otherwise the basic product will have perpetual license  but without the updates. 

Mind my words

[Adobe_Hacker]

mandelbrot wrote:

One of the things that is quite obvious from threads like this is that Adobe doesn't seem to care one way or another about our rumblings on this site (unless someone from Adobe would like to comment otherwise).

Thank god somebody has now learned (rather belatedly but definitely a good start) what exactly is happening.  The next step is to learn how to build a profitable business like Adobe's and to make people dependent on them such that they can't live comfortably without their products.

[wkjeiwoi]

somebodies already have discovered how..

the liquor business, the drug business, the sugar business, the fat business....

I sincerely don't mean anything nasty by my comment, but you must admit, these examples very closely parallel software dependancy.

[Adobe_Hacker]

wkjeiwoi wrote:

but you must admit, these examples very closely parallel software dependancy.

Yes I admit that people are so dependent on Adobe that they have become paranoid of CC.  Look at the posts in this thread.  You might think the end of the world has arrived.  you take out Microsoft and the Internet traffic would be negligible!!!!.  Think about this!!!!

[Craig Curtis]

not for nothin' but some of us have over 10 years of legacy files (and experience with adobe products - my first version of Photoshop was 3.5 - NOT CS3, which was around 1995). So yea, you might say people can get passionate about a software product. I'm not afraid to learn new software, but also don't want to dump years worth of data, either. I know other packages can open adobe PSD files, but with all the layer support?

[wkjeiwoi]

when InDesign was new, didn't it have some functionality enabling users to open Quark files?

There was a time when Quark was the only serious layout app...

[Phillip_M_Jones]

I download and opened inDesign never could make heads nor tails of it. Could not figure what you could do with it. it was just more or less a Blank screen.

[Was DYP]

Phillip Jones wrote:

I download and opened inDesign never could make heads nor tails of it. Could not figure what you could do with it. it was just more or less a Blank screen.

Now that is funny, absolutely hysterical!