Alternatives for Adobe

Software
#12

I don’t think it would be a plus for them in terms of new technology, like with the Macromedia merger or the more recent Omniture and Magento acquisitions. What I’m seeing as possibly beneficial to Adobe is for them to buy out Affinity (Serif), then slamming the brakes on any further development that might threaten their core graphics products.

I say this every chance I get, but I think federal regulators should consider Adobe a monopoly then move to break up the company into smaller, independent and competitive entities.

#13

Adobe was great up 'till the time when we had to pay for something we don’t own …GRRR!

#14

Maybe for you. For me, Adobe was great until they began forcing us to continually pay them fees for lackluster upgrades we didn’t need or want, then combining it with the threat of holding our work hostage and making it unusable when we let our subscriptions lapse.

1 Like
#15

Found something weird… again

In the font list all fonts are listed alphabetically, no problem so far but

They list all your fonts also the screen fonts that you need to see websites in different languages.

So you get the possibility to chose font that isn’t a print font.

Shame on you Affinity

And even if you add a bleed, which you can’t do in the document setup you don’t see any guides

Strange

#16

What do you think when you se the command “Place”?

Normally you would say: The picture will nog be in your document, but it will be linked to the bigger picture.

Not in Publisher, here they embed the picture. What?

Maybe I can change that… Yes you can in the resource manager.

Changedit to Linked and saved it under a different name.

Normally the file size should be less.

Not in Publisher. The size remains the same.

I had two pictures and a little bit of text… Filesize was 123 MB and had only one page

Used the same pictures and text in InDesign… Filesize 1,6 MB

#17

This is nice.

You can open een multiple page PDF in Publisher and edit all the content.

#18

Ah… come… on. Did you even take a look at the first BETA ? Everything changes.

In my opinion even the beta is already setup much more logically then indesign. And it isn’t released yet.

Sometimes you just need to adapt new things (no offense) :wink:

#19

I’m using affinity designer
not even close to illustrator in terms of functionality and speed (especially with astute plugins)
it’s eating up more system power than illustrator
there isn’t even a perspective tool, blend, skew, distort… seriously, you have to do it manually or switch to inkscape to do the necessary changes. i also miss the distortion brushes (liquify, zigzag etc)
shape builder - most wanted tool in illustrator - at least for me. impossible in affinity but there is a workaround that takes like 10x more time.
the worst thing is you can’t copy to inkscape, you either have to save it as .eps or re-do it in inkscape, because if you copy it, you get a raster image rather than a vector.

just because of everything i mentioned i had to switch to the traditional way - drawing
redrawing, tracing… again… etc
but if you compare 50$ with 239$ every year…

#20

Damn, I wouldn’t have expected that.

#21

In my opinion it’s completely the opposite. Affinity Designer is pretty fast and I’d say a lot faster than illustrator.

#22

Yes, my dabbling supports that assessment as well.

#23

I have my share of complaints about Adobe Illustrator, but I’ve never noticed it being slow. Perhaps Affinity Designer completes a task before it is initiated. :wink:

#24

Judging by Adobe forum traffic, you’re among the fortunate. I don’t have major performance issues either, but many do. On my system, I do get a relatively long startup time, and some waiting during operations like Shape Builder used on converted stuff of CAD and 3D solid model origins.

#25

Yes, the startup is slow for me too, but not unlike most other Adobe applications.

I don’t often use Illustrator for the kinds of things that would push processor limits, so I’m likely just not running into those issues very often.

#26

I have been using photoviewerpro. I can edit any image using different tools like clone Stamp and Healing Brush Superior Red-Eye effect removal/reduction with completely natural looking end result

#30

@MichaelDiaz If that works for you it’s the best for you. It’s just great to see there are coming more alternatives to Adobe products on the market. We need competition and flavours to chose from!

#31

Quark XPress back in the day was awesome! I have not used the newer version, but ID has sooooooo many issues.

#32

Hmmm…maybe my workflow just doesn’t push certain features very hard or something, but I live in InDesign, and problems are very, very rare. Can you offer some examples?

#33

Oh, it’s been so frustrating… I spend most of my time in InDesign too, often doing publication layout.

I have spent many hours in the ID forums conveying issues, some of which include:

  • Swatches and Tables palette that have no contents whatsoever;
  • Running headers “jumping” on a few pages, even though they do not deviate from the master page;
  • Accessibility issues such as Alt text on images not saving and several others.

That’s all I can think of at the moment anyway.

#34

Here’s a list of some that I just came across:
27 Free Alternatives to Adobe’s Expensive App Subscriptions