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psmith2.0
Mr. Vieira
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
 
2020-12-22, 12:51

Graculus, I don't know your specific needs and compatibility concerns, but I can expand on Frank777's suggestions a bit. I ditched Adobe nearly two years ago and I bought both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo 12-18 months ago and I've yet to run into anything that I couldn't do before with the Adobe versions.

Off-topic (click to toggle):
You buy them outright - I got both for $25 because Affinity put them on sale, half off, a year or so ago and I jumped on it like a rabbit. But you own them, they're very nimble and load fast. Yes, you have to re-learn some things, but I'm finding that I prefer a lot of those changes to what I was used to in the Adobe stuff for two decades. After a year or so, I find I'm just as comfortable and speedy and have "re-trained" myself (well before now, BTW) to "unlearn" all I knew before and embrace the new.

For the record, I mostly do standalone artwork that I hand off to others, so my collaboration/compatibility concerns are near-zero...but it's yet to have raised any issues, me no longer being on the "industry standard" titles. Naturally, they export to all the formats you'd expect. I do realize I may be in a rare (lucky) situation where I can make such a move. But if you're in a similar boat, give them a shot. I don't know the current situation, but I do know that the Affinity titles all had 30-day trial downloads (which is what convinced me to make the jump a year or so ago).

EDIT: the free trials are still available...go to the "buy now" button and you get the option to download/install a free trial there.

Affinity does offer a publishing/layout title called Publisher, so they're kinda covering that Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign suite from Adobe. I can speak for Publisher (I'll own it eventually, just because I'm so happy with the other two and I occasionally have to do a simple four-page newsletter or brochure).

And before I discovered the Affinity stuff, I spent a solid 4-6 years using, and liking, Pixelmator (I ditched Photoshop years before I did Illustrator).

Also, the Affinity stuff is all Big Sure and M1 ready/compatible.

You own them, and they have iPad versions of these titles as well.

If I can step away from my beloved Illustrator after 25 years of exclusive, full-time use, I imagine many others can too (if their situations allow; mine did).

Here's their site...give it a look. You might like what you see.


Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into an Affinity infomercial. But I'll do the "off-topic" tags so folks don't have to look at it if they don't want.
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