I started with Adobe Photoshop on the 3.25" "floppies" of 1990. I think three were needed for version 1.3. I ran it on a Mac IIfx and thought I had the world by the tail. When Adobe went all "GREEDY", I found alternatives that work for me. Obviously, they do not miss my upgrade money as they are still in business. But I own my work, not Adobe.
I've dumped Adobe for everything except AE. Damn do I wish there was an alternative to AE. $38 bucks rental for one app just is not worth it but, I am stuck. For me, it is the Affinity Suite, does everything I need in those realms that I need. DaVinci Resolve is my post production tool. I ponied up for the "Pro" version. It is pretty impressive. If I can get my head rapped around a nodal work environment, the "Fusion" page in Resolve may very well be able to replace AE. Looks like I may have to bite that very hefty bullet.
Adobe, your unbound greed has finally pushed me off of your platform for good. As a small freelancer who works when projects come along, I just can't afford you anymore. Bye-bye.
I like the Affinity apps. However, I am back using Pages for a book I’m writing because, unless I have been misinformed, Affinity Publisher only exports to PDF, not to eBooks format which is what I need.
"Since Designer v2 launched, Affinity users now have their own Trace Image feature, which was my biggest complaint about the first version."
Can someone point out to me where Affinity Designer has this Trace Image feature? I'm not aware of it and it's one of the features I miss from Illustrator.
Keep your fingers crossed for the next version of Photomator. It's a Lightroom replacement and the spiritual successor to Aperture, which was much loved before they pulled the plug on it. Now that Apple owns Photomator and Pixelmator, they must have plans for the pair.
Anyone else getting nervous over the lack of updates for Pixelmator Pro and Photomator? They used to come out like clockwork every couple of months and the roadmaps are all gone.
I really hope Apple isn't doing a Dark Sky hatchet job on it.
Going dark on future plans is right out of Apple's playbook. I'm not surprised. There's not a good reason to kill the products, since Apple doesn't have a direct competitor to either of them. Photos has had a lot of work done to it lately, but it's not hardly a Photoshop level tool. Pixelmator Pro is a Photoshop level tool, and it's lightning fast on top of that.
It's a shame that Adobe has priced its tools out of reach for everyone but professionals. Heck, I'm sure they've even priced out some professionals.
My kids want to use Adobe, and I wouldn't mind using it occasionally, but it's a clear no-go for us due to pricing. We've got the money, but the value proposition is just so absurdly not there.
Glad to see open source options continuing to survive and some lower-cost entrants beginning to thrive.
Many of the complaints about the open source interfaces come down to two things. All of those apps are ports from Linux and everyone knows that Linux developers know absolutely nothing about UI design. I’ve never met a Linux UI I’ve liked.
The second reason the interfaces suck is because many of those Linux apps are designed to mimick Windows 95 and everyone know Microsoft back in the day knew nothing about UI design. I’ve never met a Windows 95 UI I’ve liked.
Listen, I'm as disgusted with Adobe as anybody, but to say Affinity Designer is comparable is just lunacy. Designer's handling of layers is its worst bugaboo. Everything is placed on a new layer, including each letter of text. How can you find or manage anything if you've got hundreds of layers?? Designer doesn't even have a way of moving an object a specified number of pixels. That's great if you don't need precision in your designs. I could go on and on. How do I know all this? I tried Designer for over three years, hoping with each release (including v2) they would wake up and make obvious improvements. Sorry, Designer is one big turd.
A bit late to this article and comments, but you can move and scale items using the Move / Duplicate menu. To get this select an item and press the return key, you will get a menu allowing you to move horizontally and vertically by numeric values the units of which are set by the Document Setup you can also scale by percentage. If you wish to change from mm say to pixels go to the Document Setup and change the units. Hope this helps.
Comments
Adobe, your unbound greed has finally pushed me off of your platform for good. As a small freelancer who works when projects come along, I just can't afford you anymore. Bye-bye.
Can someone point out to me where Affinity Designer has this Trace Image feature? I'm not aware of it and it's one of the features I miss from Illustrator.
TIA
My kids want to use Adobe, and I wouldn't mind using it occasionally, but it's a clear no-go for us due to pricing. We've got the money, but the value proposition is just so absurdly not there.
Glad to see open source options continuing to survive and some lower-cost entrants beginning to thrive.
The second reason the interfaces suck is because many of those Linux apps are designed to mimick Windows 95 and everyone know Microsoft back in the day knew nothing about UI design. I’ve never met a Windows 95 UI I’ve liked.
nuff said