Nobody stopping you.
Comes up every year when the price increases by a few dollars.
Plenty of alternatives, good luck with it.
Everyone, including me, is getting tired of subscription services increasing their prices by a few dollars every year. Add them up, and the increased prices are a good-sized chunk of money.
On the other hand, software is the cost of doing business for professionals, and the money is recouped by raising design fees enough to cover the difference. For amateurs, hobbyists, and part-time freelancers, maybe a $5 per month increase is too much. If so, seriously, the Affinity Suite will meet the needs of most freelancers, hobbyists, and even pros who primarily specialize in print work.
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Added up mine recently come to quite a lot.
Itâs tough, i donât steal.
No matter what.
If i want it Iâll buty it. Missed the usyk fight tonight cos i accidentally subscribed.
Iâll catch it tomorrow. No BRB l big deal
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Terrible phone
Ugh, just got off the phone. Was trying to type a reply there but it was awkward, so Iâm back on the laptop now.
Bit of a tangent to start I accidentally subscribed to DAZN and got hit with a âŹ25 charge when it was supposed to be âŹ7.99 for the first month. Cancelled it straight away and told them it wasnât what I signed up for.
Then I went to watch the Usyk fight, thinking Iâd still have access. Nope. That was another âŹ30 or something on top. Subscriptions are killing me.
I sat down the other night and added up everything weâre subscribed to right now between the two of us. Nearly âŹ300 a month. Madness. You canât blame people for looking for alternatives. Dodgy boxes start to sound very tempting. I read about a ring in Italy that got busted, worth nearly âŹ10 billion. Thatâs all criminal money. Whole thingâs a mess.
As I said, I wonât steal, or give money to dodgy sites for software, it all goes to a criminal enterprise and I wonât be part of that.
As for Adobe, I love the software. Always have. Mostly because itâs what the industry runs on. Itâs been my profession for over 25 years now. If Iâm not using it, Iâm out of the loop. Out of work. Out of the conversation. Itâs not even about being trapped. If anything, I feel lucky I can afford the tools I use to make a living.
That said, yeah, I feel the pinch. Disney+ went up. Primeâs gone up. Paramount, too. Netflix is covered through Sky but still, it all adds up. The Adobe price hike doesnât sting as much because I earn from it. If Adobeâs price goes up, so do mine. Thatâs just how it works.
I had a client, my very first one actually, that I worked with for years. I started out cheap, way too cheap, but she gave me my first break, so I kept her rate low. Five years in, I was still charging her that original rate. She actually questioned it. Said, âWhy havenât your prices gone up?â I explained that she gets the founderâs rate. She wasnât having it. Insisted on paying more.
Whatâs all this got to do with Adobeâs price increase? Everything.
Even clients expect price increases now. Itâs the way the worldâs gone.
Imagine a guttering company still charging 1975 prices today. Youâd wonder whatâs wrong with them. Inflationâs real. Cost of doing business is real. So is staying current. Thatâs what the Adobe subscription buys me.
Would I like it to be cheaper? Sure. But Iâd rather be inside the house paying for the lights than outside peeking through the window hoping someoneâs cracked a streaming service.
I think that Adobe tools are important but it doesnât mean that it is not impossible to do Graphic Design without them. There are so many tools or programs out there that can be useful !
Totally agree there are plenty of alternatives now, and a lot of them are getting really good. Affinity, Canva, Figma, Krita, even Blender for some wild crossovers.
Thereâs more choice than ever, and thatâs a good thing. But for me, Adobe isnât just a tool, itâs the language of the industry I work in. Iâve been using it professionally for 25+ years, so itâs not just about preference, itâs about compatibility, workflow, client expectations, collaboration, and being in sync with printers, publishers, agencies, the whole pipeline.
If I were starting fresh or working solo with no external demands, Iâd absolutely be exploring other options. But if youâre working in teams, handling legacy files, jumping between Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects, Acrobat, Bridge, and maybe scripting bits of all of them itâs hard to walk away from that setup.
So yeah, itâs not impossible to do graphic design without Adobe. But in a lot of professional settings, itâs very inconvenient.
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Yes, but donât forget : Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus and other tools like KdenLive, Shotcut, OpenToonz and Tahoma 2d ! LOL
Yeh theyâre all fine for general work but have their drawbacks.
Gimp 3 does finally lets you export CMYK TIFF or PSD, but you still paint in RGB and convert at the end. That late switch is fine for a poster for the local fiveâaâside, risky for a âŹ50 000 litho run where ink limits and overprint behaviour matter.
Inkscape and CMYK
Inkscape is brilliant for SVG but it still hands you an RGB PDF. There are workâarounds and pray but you can lose live separation preview and proper ink coverage checks.
Scribus can tag a colour as âspotâ, yet the Pantone libraries are missing because the licence costs real money. Users build swatches by eye or import thirdâparty palettes, and a recent bug shows Scribus sometimes converts spots back to CMYK on export anyway.
A brand guide arrives as an Illustrator logo, the annual report is in InDesign, images are layered Photoshop PSDs, the promo video sits in Premiere and needs lower thirds from After Effects. Adobe apps share colour settings, libraries and scripts so the handâoffs are instant.
The agency hands you a packaged InDesign job with linked PSDs. The printer wants a certified PDF. The brand guardian insists on Pantone 185. Telling them you rebuilt everything in Gimp and hope the red looks close may not fly.
For hobby work, small digital print, social posts or indie animation those tools are fantastic. I use them myself now and then. They just are not a full substitute for colour critical preâpress in a commercial setting.
So yes, you can design without Adobe. You can also cut a lawn with scissors. Both will work, but folk will wonder why you chose the harder path when a mower is in reach.
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Just to add some are using Corel which is very powerful and used widely in sign printing.
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Thatâs true and Most of Designers are aware of this ! main problem of Gimp and Inkscape that the have a lack of support for CMYK !
Affinity is quite good, say itâs the main competitor to Adobe right now, along with Canva.
Canva PDFs still cause headaches in professional work flows (for printing etc).
As Affinity was bought by Canva or invested in by them, Iâm not really sure which way it is going.
But the Affinity tools are relatively cheap.
I did trial them, and I was on the beta testing for them a good time ago now.
Back then they were not quite as good at doing what Adobe was doing. And lots of people in the beta approached them over things that they wanted to see in the application, and they simply didnât want to do it.
I lost interest in it after that. And from what Iâve heard they havenât really progressed as much as I would need them to to make the switch.
Thatâs my own personal take, based on what I know I need.
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When it comes to PDF, I have to recognize that Adobe is the King ! (The Creator too).
That depends on who is using them and for what purpose.
For someone just messing around or who might not have the money for serious tools or the interest to justify the investment, it might be okay or serve as a stepping stone to developing a serious interest and a possible career path.
On the other hand, these tools have multiple drawbacks that make them unsuitable for professional-level work.
As an analogy, a cheap, generic Chinese knockoff circular saw purchased at a thrift shop might suffice for a home DIYer who occasionally needs to cut a plank of wood in half. However, that saw would be entirely unsuitable for the daily demands of a professional construction jobsite.
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For me I think that all tools are useful, even if they are small or big, but speaking about âstepping stoneâ or some of this programs considered as âunprofessionalâ, then donât forget that for example Blender. And Blender it has been used for movie that won the Oscar.
Itâs not the software that won the Oscar. Thatâs like saying a car won a race it wasnât the car, it was the driver. Same with design tools. Blender didnât win the Oscar. The team behind it did, using Blender as one part of a much bigger pipeline.
There are artists out there who are dedicated to MS Paint. Seriously. I made my first logo in MS Paint when I was about 14. I didnât know what I was doing was âwrongâ but it worked. The logo was used for years.
MS Paint artists are real Meet the Artists Whoâve Dedicated Themselves to MS Paint
So yes, all tools can be useful, but that doesnât mean theyâre the right tool for a specific job. Just because someone can sculpt marble with a spoon doesnât mean spoons belong in a stone workshop. Same goes for print design.
I could layout a magazine entirely in Photoshop and send it to a printer as a press-ready PDF. Theyâd never know unless they checked the metadata. It would print fine.
That doesnât mean Photoshop was the right tool for that job. It just means I made it work. Thatâs the key thing itâs not whether you can do something with a tool, itâs whether itâs the best, most efficient, most professional choice.
Especially when youâre working to deadlines, collaborating with others, or delivering to exacting industry specs. The Oscar win was about execution, storytelling, creative vision the software helped, but it didnât make it.
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Just a small correction⊠I didnât use the word unprofessional, I wrote âunsuitable for professional-level work.â I tried to clarify that with my analogy of a cheap circular saw being unsuitable for the rigors of a professional construction site.
Blender might have been the perfect tool for whatever role it played in winning an Oscar. I donât know, I wasnât there. Iâm not criticizing open-source software, per se. For example, Linux is the OS for the majority of web servers.
My point is that in the daily professional world of graphic design, GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus, etc., arenât suitable tools for numerous reasons. A designer submitting a resume to an ad agency with those apps listed instead of the Adobe Suite or perhaps Affinity wonât get the job â they wonât even be called in for an interview, even if their work looks promising.
However, this doesnât mean the open-source, DIY graphics apps donât have their place in certain situations. Smurf2âs example of using MS Paint as a 14-year-old is a good example. Your Blender example is another.
Hi Just-B sorry I didnât mean you or any one here in the forum, my apologies !. I mean in General Public (people outside of the forum) may think, this software is âunprofessionalâ or even not useful. In any case I think that all programs in some way can be useful in different manners.
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Hi
But speaking about Linux and professional tools, does any one knows that Linux was used to make the movie Titanic ? and also there are companies like Walt Disney that they make their own tools from Open Source :
https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2494
Enjoy !
Yeah, thatâs fairly well known. Titanicâs effects pipeline leaned heavily on Linux, and studios like Disney absolutely build their own tools often on top of open source. But these are professionals with deep experience, working in teams, with years of tooling, scripting, and pipeline integration behind them. Theyâre not just using the tools, theyâre building them. Thatâs a very different world.
Itâs a far cry from someone just starting out, taking on freelance clients, and delivering work that might look great on screen but doesnât hold up when it hits the real-world production pipeline whether thatâs print, broadcast, digital, or web. Compatibility matters. File standards matter. Colour profiles, exports, naming conventions, bleed, safety margins, metadata it all counts.
The tools big studios use are often custom-tailored for their very specific needs, and the people using them know exactly what theyâre doing. Open source can be brilliant, but it usually requires more technical skill, not less. Youâve got to understand the engine under the hood.
So sure, Linux and open-source tools can be used professionally and are but thereâs a canyon between âpossibleâ and âpracticalâ, especially for solo designers or people just breaking in.
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