I've finally done it

A momentous day today. I have finally cancelled my Adobe CC subscription and are now something like £45.00 per month better off.

Now that I’ve bitten the bullet, does anyone have any recommendations on a Photoshop substitute? Please no one mention GIMP otherwise I’ll scream the place down :smile:
Also any recommendations for a vector graphics package, similar to Fireworks (which I really did like)?

Thanks

Affinity Photo or Pixelmator for photos. The former is the more professional option.

Affinity Designer for vector graphics.

I envy you. I certainly cannot afford a CC subscription but I need InDesign and Acrobat Pro. I’m hoping that Affinity Publisher will eventually replace InDesign but it is a big ask.

It is possible that Adobe are going to review their pricing model as I recently completed a questionnaire about various price ranges for different packages and individual apps. However, I don’t really like their attitude to their customers.

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Affinity Designer (vector) and Afinity Photo (raster). Both are very good and are available the the MAS for £30 if I remember correctly. Don’t be put off by the low price, they are both fully featured and are regularly updated.

PaulRussam, I’ve just downloaded a trial of Infinity Designer - it looks pretty much like a re-work of Fireworks, which is good - no huge learning curve there then. I’ll have a play and then download Affinity Designer.

peterdankwerts, it took a good 3/4 hour to convince Adobe that I wanted to cancel. They were getting quite aggressive, especially when I told them that I could actually own alternative software, no subscription etc., which was considerably cheaper than their offerings.

The only bits of Adobe CC I use (used) was Fireworks and Dreamweaver and paying £45 per month was proving to be far to expensive for the amount of time I was using them. It’s high time they reviewed their pricing structure as I was paying for umpteen applications that I would never ever use. A bit like taking out a Sky TV subscription with all the bells and whistles; sports, films and so on and only watching 3 of the 600 channels on offer.

So after being a loyal Adobe customer since Photoshop 5, the end of the line has been reached.

On the plus side, having uninstalled Adobe CC, I have reclaimed about 6 GB of hard drive space - yippee!!

PS., anyone want any Photoshop / Dreamweaver books :wink:

I use old versions of photoshop, illustrator and indesign every day as a graphic designer, and am thankful never to have upgraded to CC.
I know it’ll get me in the end though!

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Unfortunately, only the recent CC versions of InDesign have decent fixed-layout epub export. I did use pre-CC versions of Photoshop and Illustrator until I got the Affinity programs. The CC versions won’t work on my ageing iMac.

CC is a kiss of death. Way too expensive and too many “add ons” for what most people need. Its an all or nothing scenario.

Their “customer service” operatives this morning were very rude and aggressive, so after telling them their fortunes they’ve lost my custom and I certainly won’t be going back to them.

I haven’t experienced any rudeness but I haven’t cancelled my subscription! Yet. There are certainly too many programs and too many gimmicks but inDesign has got much better in the last year or two.

Glad to hear that you’ve had no problems with them and also that InDesign has improved.
As for me, onwards and upwards getting to grips with RapidWeaver et al :smile:

Sketch for vector and Acorn for bitmap has to be mentioned too. Small indie developers that deserves our support. Both in AppStore.

Affinity Designer/Photo. But also have a look here. You might like that, too: http://www.lemkesoft.de/index.php?id=32&L=1

I think the way I’m going to head is with Affinity Photo & Designer - they have pretty consistent interfaces and no steep learning curve either cos I’m getting on a bit now :slight_smile:

Couldn’t do what I do without CC. It’s the spine of our production. That said we’ve stayed with the version before subscription… we really had to fight hard for that! Adobe cancelled our purchase and wanted to replace it with a subscription – after couple of days chat we got it our way.

But I’m supporting Affinity Designer & Affinity Photo… bought both. Quite nice… but at lot of our clients are using Photoshop and CC so we can’t really do without.

If your looking at an Adobe Indesign alternative – take a look at: Viva Designer: http://www.viva.us/en/products/desktop-publishing/vivadesigner-desktop-version

It opens Indesign idml-files… not perfectly… and it’s not Indesign. But it’s also a lot cheaper.

And then there’s Publisher Master in the App Store. It’s not a pro desktop publishing app but quite nice, simple… and does have a few options not even avaliable in Indesign (without extra plugins).

I’ve been using Graphic Converter forever – well, since OS 9. I think. Very useful for batch cnversions.

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The Affinity stuff looks amazing. I have CS5 suite which runs fine for now, but the “monthly payment for software” model can do one.

No new suggestions from me, however, as the prevailing sentiment goes here, I have to add my displeasure with Adobe’s subscription plans.

I’ve been using Photoshop since version 3.1 (if I remember well). Lightroom – since the first public beta of the brand new product. I am still using the last available non-subscription versions of both and I will never give up under their constant pressure to buy a subscription to their “Photographer’s Plan”, even though it only costs $10 a month.

Adobe became as greedy and as arrogant as Microsoft used to be before their fading off into obscurity. And I have a feeling that Adobe will be going the same way, sooner or later.

And I am, too, considering other options – like the Affinity stuff.