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?

[billhdz]

I am on the Mac and I use Paralells Desktop to run good windows apps.

We like "Xara Designer Pro" and/or "PaintShop Pro".

On the Mac OS, we also use the OnOne and Topaz plug-ins which don't require Photoshop to run them.  We do everything from image retouching to advanced masking with these plug-ins.

[Danny_Michael]

Yes, there are "substitutions" for Photoshop, but for someone who's used it since v3.0.5 nothing is acceptable. I have years invested in Photoshop, it has become a big part of my life. To move to a "substitute" would require accepting less and investing time that I do not wish to invest. I will continue to use PS CS6 until it dies, it does everything I need now and in the future. With any luck, I'll die first.

[W_J_T]

Danny Michael wrote:

I will continue to use PS CS6 until it dies. it does everything I need now and in the future.

Honestly if people own a previous Adobe software version then, that is the solution and alternative to the Creative Cloud.

I posted something along these lines (modifed here to make sense), of the following comments previously in another thread:

W_J_T wrote:

I would say that the countless creative professionals the world over who delivered award winning campaigns and solutions to clients over the last 25 years across print, broadcast, web, etc., that collectively also would out number the revenues Adobe made over the same time proves in itself that the new emphasis on services is perhaps misaligned as these services were not needed for the said accomplishments but instead just the software as desktop apps that Adobe has now said it is working so hard to move away from. The fundamental desire to improve something is one thing, the need to change something is another. Adobe's customers themselves proved the value they could produce with the tools provided across the creative community, without need for integrated services that Adobe now wishes to offer and feel are necessary and so important moving forward.

Many new Creative Cloud users willingly jumped at the CC offering (much like previous upgrades) along with buying into the marketing push with the notion that if you don't have the latest XYZ feature or version that you're somehow falling behind and not an industry leader or able to continue to provide cutting edge results to your customers. Most actual creative people when you look at their work could be doing the same work with installs of PhotoShop 6, Illustrator 6, Quark 4, InDesign 2, Premiere 5, After effects 5, etc. (some versions #'s might even be way too generous for a lot of peoples work, or maybe a little to old for others), and a basic text editor for all your HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, frameworks, libraries, etc. Most times, I don't see anything that requires some mythical cutting edge features regardless of people wanting or feeling a need to have and pay for them or not.

CS6, CS5.5, CS5, CS4, CS3, etc, will continue to produce award winning results the world over, for those whom are creative and understand software is merely a tool not an end all be all, but talent certainly is.

Hopefully that makes some sense?

[Danny_Michael]

W_J_T wrote:

Honestly if people own a previous Adobe software version then, that is the solution and alternative to the Creative Cloud.

I agree. Other than an OS making PS CS6 obsolete, and since I have no plans on a new camera any time soon, I have many years ahead of me using PS CS6. There is nothing more I want from the software as far as features go. When the time comes to upgrade my camera, I'll look to other raw processing software and simply lose the ability to use smart objects. I won't contribute to the Adobe stock holders in my future purchases. On my day job I work as a Prepress supervisor and make all our purchasing decisions. We won't be joining the Cloud and our customers won't either. We've discussed at length with all of them why it's not in their best interest to do so. We have not had a single customer disagree with our assessment. For any that do move to the Cloud, they'll be required to submit print ready PDF's. It's all good.

All we can do is talk with our wallets. Adobe isn't listening to anything else.

[ReactionAtWork]

@W_J_T:

You're absolutely right about the 'mythical cutting edge features'. I expect a very large proportion of users realised they didn't need to upgrade every version, or even every three versions, and Adobe's obscene upgrade prices made sure that's exactly what happened.

If Adobe had only made the CS upgrade prices more reasonable - like 1/10 of the new purchase price, to fairly reflect the small number of feeble features they had actually added - they would have had 10x the number of users happily upgrading on each release. And then perhaps this thoroughly evil idea of CC would never have been inflicted upon us.

Only an idiot (or a rich idiot) will sign up to CC - and in doing so sign away their rights, forever, to freely access or edit their own creations in future years.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

ReactionAtWork wrote:

Only an idiot (or a rich idiot) will sign up to CC - and in doing so sign away their rights, forever, to freely access or edit their own creations in future years.

This wouldn't be my only concern here - has anyone fully read the terms and conditions associated to storing their work on the 'cloud'?  Who exactly has access to your work?  Are you likely to find that a fantastic photograph that's taken you a lot of time and effort suddenly appears as a banner for Adobe one day and they turn to you and say: "You ticked the box condoning our usage; so deal with it!"

I've tried finding the T&Cs but without signing my life away I haven't found them yet.  I did find the FAQ and it's certainly worth a read.

[ReactionAtWork]

That's a possibility but I'm sure some legalese protects your copyright.

What concerns me is the fundamental ability to access and edit your creations. Say you do some work for a client using your Adobe CC tools. The job is finished it and you archive it (disk, cloud, doesn't matter). You are now committed to keep paying Adobe, forever, to ensure you can open those files one day in the future when the client asks for an update. By limiting the world to using CC, Adobe ensnares every user to pay indefinitely (at an unknown future rate set by them!) just to re-use your own creations - or lose them forever.

Commericial stupidity at the very least, if not commerical suicide.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

I know that GIMP can convert PS images, though it looses things like the layer effects.

[billhdz]

W_J_T wrote:

I would say that the countless creative professionals the world over who delivered award winning campaigns and solutions to clients over the last 25 years across print, broadcast, web, etc., that collectively also would out number the revenues Adobe made over the same time proves in itself that the new emphasis on services is perhaps misaligned as these services were not needed for the said accomplishments but instead just the software as desktop apps that Adobe has now said it is working so hard to move away from. The fundamental desire to improve something is one thing, the need to change something is another. Adobe's customers themselves proved the value they could produce with the tools provided across the creative community, without need for integrated services that Adobe now wishes to offer and feel are necessary and so important moving forward.

Many new Creative Cloud users willingly jumped at the CC offering (much like previous upgrades) along with buying into the marketing push with the notion that if you don't have the latest XYZ feature or version that you're somehow falling behind and not an industry leader or able to continue to provide cutting edge results to your customers. Most actual creative people when you look at their work could be doing the same work with installs of PhotoShop 6, Illustrator 6, Quark 4, InDesign 2, Premiere 5, After effects 5, etc. (some versions #'s might even be way too generous for a lot of peoples work, or maybe a little to old for others), and a basic text editor for all your HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, frameworks, libraries, etc. Most times, I don't see anything that requires some mythical cutting edge features regardless of people wanting or feeling a need to have and pay for them or not.

CS6, CS5.5, CS5, CS4, CS3, etc, will continue to produce award winning results the world over, for those whom are creative and understand software is merely a tool not an end all be all, but talent certainly is.

That's 90% true today as long as your computer hardware and software can support older versions of CS.  As technology changes and computers and operating systems get updated, this may not be the case.  But we still have a few years of good usage.

But a SAFER bet for your career and/or business is to start learning other software as well as time goes by.  This will ensure that you always have the advantage and flexibility in the future if for some reason you can no longer use outdated Adobe software. Another advanrage of learning new software now is that it makes the transition much easier if you have to change your workflow in the future.

In other words, never put all your eggs in ONE basket.

Best Wishes!

[W_J_T]

billhdz wrote:

That's 90% true today as long as your computer hardware and software can support older versions of CS.  As technology changes and computers and operating systems get updated, this may not be the case.

True and yes I realize that, however many individuals, agencies, etc.. have various machines on hand for specific purposes. So even as technology moves forward you can still utilize previous incarnations as needed. The versions I mentioned was just as an example based on the creative end results yielded.

billhdz wrote:

- learning other software as well as time goes by.

- never put all your eggs in ONE basket.

Yes and yes. I reside in a constant state of learning. We have probably all learned the hard way at some point about eggs and baskets. 😉

[Professional_Pirates]

blahlaaaablah wrote:

There are no real, viable alternatives now to Adobe's main products in the same way that Freehand was an alternative to Illustrator. Most people would agree with this. But there is much more of a financial opening now for not-quite-there products like Sketch.

so whose fault is it?  Are you blaming Adobe for this or are you accusing Adobe for stopping people to develop new products that people would love to buy them.

I have not seen Adobe stopping anybody from developing new products.  The only restriction is that you can't infringe any of the Adobe's patents but there are very few anyway.  The menu system and all that is standard given by Microsoft for people to develop windows Applications.  I believe, Apple does the same;  You have to use their SDK - Software Development Kit to develop any products for Apple so that it complies with their "look and feel" interface.

People should compete with Adobe or just give up and do something else.  Stop blaming Adobe for starting CC;  In fact CC is not a new trend.  Microsoft started it well before anybody.

The only people who are not allowing free speech are the jobless MVPs loitering on these forums.  They delete any posts that criticize them and my post may not survive for long here.

[Guest]

depending on the country...in the UK a monopoly is defined as a company or business that controls more than 25% of the market place... I would estimate Adobe's market share at about 70% ....so there are alternatives but Adobe controls the market

[urdaddi]

Chazinbermuda wrote:

depending on the country...in the UK a monopoly is defined as a company or business that controls more than 25% of the market place... I would estimate Adobe's market share at about 70% ....so there are alternatives but Adobe controls the market

Thank you for that information. Facts are always welcome.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

There may be alternatives. But some apps for what they do nobody can compete with them. They may not be officially consider a Monopoly. But they are for now the 800 pound gorilla.

If the independent contractor working for fortune 500 companies would explain to them what Adobe is doing and enough of them did. That would put some heat on Acrobat.

Love see their stock go down 85% because of this.

[Craig Curtis]

i am fine with getting the installers via the internet. I just don't want to rent the software. Adobe isn't adding "must have" updates to the software, and storing my files on their "cloud" is a non-starter, so I am not interested in that.

Its a little like leasing vs buyig a car. At leasrt when the lease is up, I have the option to pay the car off and keep it, or get rid of it. Would be nice if Adobe at least did that.

As it is, I'm looking for other venues to get CS6 on disk, at the least. I actually need another copy of just photoshop, and have not had luck creating another user ID (just to pay for single app as I mentioned before).

there is ZERO need for me to pay so much for the whole suite when I rarely need more than one of the apps. And then to have to pay that much more just to get the "teams" version, I am afraid that Adobe is pretty much done getting any of my money. With all that said I am even a stock holder, and while in the short term I can see how they are trying to get a consistant revenue stream, I don't think people are going to stand for it very long.

[patx_willener]

Chazinbermuda wrote:

the etc here referes to all the associated costs of producing shipping and housing of physsical products..... even though adobe made a 1 billion net profit this is one their arguments for the cloud... the cost they say is too high

In that case they should shut down their Indian call centers and create more jobless people MVPs who can spend all their time here answering questions for free and deleting posts they don't like.  this may not survive for long!!!

Have you not noticed that some of these guys have posted in thousands on these forums and they got paid absolutely nothing.  They are MVPs after all.

[Craig Curtis]

the freelancer does not need the full suite, and I don't really even have the freelancer every day. So why would I pay for a full CC membership to only use one app? same reason I would have only bought photoshop, instead of the whole suite.

and having to have multiple user id's makes it a royal pain to have to maintain multiple user ID's. What happes if I need to expand and add other retouchers? They don't need full creative suite, and I wouldn't pay for that. How many BS adobe ID's do I have to sign up for?

[frankgrimes]

Craig Curtis wrote:

signed.

so my rant: I tried to add a second subscription of JUST photoshop to my user ID. Apparently (a fact that you can't find out until AFTER you buy) you can't seem to have more than one subscription to creative cloud per user. This is HORRIBLE.

I have one CC membership - cost $49/mon

wanted to add one "photoshop only" version for when I have extra freelancers work at my studio. This should be $29/mon (for a total of $78).

Since adobe only allows "one subscription per user ID" you are REQUIRED to upgrade to "TEAM" membership. The main difference is that the team membership gives you an extra 80 gigs creative cloud storage (who cares). And the privelege of this is that you have to pay $70 per user, per month. So instead of me paying $78 per month to run this aspect of my business, it will now cost $140. Nice way to kill small businesses, Adobe.

So am I reading this correctly? Adobe is saying only one installation and only one user are allowed to use a subscription? You need to use a "team" memebership if you have multiple users?

This kind of makes sense in that my perpetual license is for me only, but allows me to install it on two machines providing I only use one at a time.

Yeah, this blows. The costs have skyrocketed.

[Craig Curtis]

correct. either create multiple ID's (which is a paperwork nightmare, potentially) or pay up for teams.

my issue is also that I *should* be eligable for a cheaper "upgrade" fee because I have an older version of just photoshop, in addition to my creative suite boxed version, which I already upgraded. It appears that the old boxed photoshop standalone is also tied to my old user ID, so now I can't upgrade that?

[frankgrimes]

Craig Curtis wrote:

correct. either create multiple ID's (which is a paperwork nightmare, potentially) or pay up for teams.

my issue is also that I *should* be eligable for a cheaper "upgrade" fee because I have an older version of just photoshop, in addition to my creative suite boxed version, which I already upgraded. It appears that the old boxed photoshop standalone is also tied to my old user ID, so now I can't upgrade that?

A lot of my colleagues are looking to enterprise licensing. I do a ton of work for a university here and there's no way they will pay for individual licenses for the hundreds or more users they have.

Man, the more I learn about CC the sicker I get. I never used more than 3 or 4 apps, but I will miss them.

[Craig Curtis]

update: if you own more than one full copy of the software, you are NOT eligible for upgrade pricing, because the older boxed versions of the software are (probably) under your old user id, as mine are. So if you want to sign up for separate accounts, you will NOT get upgrade pricing

[Phillip_M_Jones]

And I believe earlier in this thread some said its cheap only $50.00 a Month. And I tried to point out it ain't that cheap.

[Yellamokara]

Craig Curtis wrote:

signed.

so my rant: I tried to add a second subscription of JUST photoshop to my user ID. Apparently (a fact that you can't find out until AFTER you buy) you can't seem to have more than one subscription to creative cloud per user. This is HORRIBLE.

I have one CC membership - cost $49/mon

wanted to add one "photoshop only" version for when I have extra freelancers work at my studio. This should be $29/mon (for a total of $78).

Since adobe only allows "one subscription per user ID" you are REQUIRED to upgrade to "TEAM" membership. The main difference is that the team membership gives you an extra 80 gigs creative cloud storage (who cares). And the privelege of this is that you have to pay $70 per user, per month. So instead of me paying $78 per month to run this aspect of my business, it will now cost $140. Nice way to kill small businesses, Adobe.

Is there any reason you simply can't start a second user profile if you want a second subscription?

Or is that too obvious?

[bababongatwo]

Yellamokara wrote:

Is there any reason you simply can't start a second user profile if you want a second subscription?

Or is that too obvious?

To obvious.
It´s the NEW Adobe we are talking about.

Regarding to their business terms you are not allowed to create an second account as the same person.

(In reality you can, but on the paper it´s illegal)

If you want more than one subscription you have to take the team models and pay and pay.

Also: We in Europe are paying double the price as in the US (in most countries).
Wonder why. But Adobe surly knows.

[ReactionAtWork]

Corel DRAW Suite easily replaces Illustrator and Photoshop. I used Corel for years until a marketing department (with a fat greedy Adobe sized budget) said I had to use Adobe products. So we coughed up 6x the cash for the Adobe suite and ended up with programs that looked very creaky, despite being the 'industry standard'.

• Have you ever used Illustrator's Arc tool? Possibly the most laughably appalling 'tool' I had ever used. You can't even enter start and end angles, instead having to work through a complex construction of circle and intersecting lines just to get, say, a 60 degree arc. I was using tools 20 YEARS ago that allowed you to enter start and end angles, and of course Corel can do it.
• How about Photoshop's appalling gradient tool?  For years, in Corel Photopaint, you can interactively drag and adjust the gradient on screen and see the result instantly. No ridiculous modal dialog box and entering numbers, click OK, oh no that's not right, open dialog, enter number, click OK... oh no that's not right... open dialog...

People who have never used anything except Adobe don't really how much better things can be elsewhere - for a tiny fraction of the cost too.