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Adobe Alternative

Posted on June 20, 2019 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Affinity Publisher is a low-cost but highly capable desktop publishing program that rivals Adobe InDesign.

Adobe sells some of the best graphics and desktop publishing programs in the world. Unfortunately, Adobe products are also expensive and require a subscription service. For anyone who wants the results that Adobe products can create but without the expense of buying an Adobe subscription, look at Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, and Affinity Photo instead.

Affinity Designer is a vector graphics program similar to Illustrator while Affinity Photo is similar to Photoshop and Affinity Publisher is similar to InDesign. Best of all, each program costs around $40-$50 with no ongoing subscription fee. Once you buy it, it’s yours to use for as long as you wish without paying any additional fees.

Naturally, if you’re already familiar with Adobe products, you may not want to switch to a rival product. However, if cost is a major factor, Affinity’s product line can easily replace Adobe’s products for all but the most sophisticated users.

One particularly useful feature of Affinity Publisher is its live link option to Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. This means that if you need to edit a graphic image within Affinity Publisher, you can access Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo right within Affinity Publisher.

With Adobe products, you might be editing a graphic image in InDesign, which would require you to load Illustrator or Photoshop, and then edit that graphic image. Then you’ll need to add that edited graphic image back into InDesign again. By eliminating this process, Affinity Publisher makes it easy to edit graphics without leaving your desktop publishing document in Affinity Publisher.

Although Affinity products are much less expensive than Adobe’s products, they offer the features most people need, even experienced graphic designers. Before spending money on Adobe, take a close look at Affinity product line to see if they might match your needs instead.

For anyone learning graphics and desktop publishing on a budget, Adobe’s products are out of reach so look to Affinity’s product line instead. Once you understand the basics of using Affinity’s products, you can easily apply those same principles to using Adobe’s software if you wish.

The bottom line is that Adobe’s software is just too expensive for most people, even professionals. Look at Affinity’s products. They may be all that you need after all.

To learn more about Affinity Publisher, click here.

Artificial Intelligence Coming to Ordinary Programs

Posted on January 1, 2017 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Adobe Sensei is an artificial intelligence feature designed to make Adobe’s software easier to use.

Software is too complicated. When you try to use most programs, the sheer number of features buried under multiple layers of menus, icons, and hidden panels, windows, and dialog boxes makes learning and using any software extremely difficult. Rather than provide fewer features to make programs easier to use, most companies prefer to keep adding more features to make their programs harder to use.

One solution to this problem is to offer a beginner mode and an expert mode, which Adobe does with their Photoshop Elements program. The idea is that if you know what you’re doing, you can use the expert mode with all the options available, but if you’re just getting started, you can start with the beginner mode that only displays the most common features you may need.

Now Adobe is going one step further and testing Adobe Sensei, an artificial intelligence feature designed for two tasks. First, Sensei will act as a virtual assistant and guide you through the commands needed to perform common tasks. Second, Sensei will speed up tasks to help advanced users accomplish more automatically.

Sensei is Adobe’s way of adding artificial intelligence to its ordinary programs. The goal is to give both beginners and experts alike a chance to use Adobe software in less time. If Sensei proves successful, expect artificial intelligence to appear in other programs as well.

If you used Microsoft Office a long time ago, you may remember Microsoft’s first attempts at virtual assistants with Clippy the paperclip, which would pop up and offer suggestions. The huge problem with Clippy was that it proved more of a nuisance than an aid. Sensei hopefully will actually provide useful help at the exact moment you need and want it.

If Sensei can bring artificial intelligence to common programs like Adobe Photoshop, artificial intelligence virtual assistants will likely pop up in Microsoft Office, Windows, and other complicated programs.

Artificial intelligence has come a long way since the early days when programmers had to anticipate everything in advance. With machine learning, artificial intelligence can get progressively smarter and more useful over time. Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants will likely become the next user interface feature that all modern programs will offer.

Ready to Dump Adobe?

Posted on November 27, 2015 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

What it is: Serif Software originally sold Windows-based graphics programs, but have recently released photo editing and vector drawing programs called Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

If you’re a professional graphics designer, you probably learned using Adobe’s software and you probably have to keep using Adobe’s software including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Photoshop is the standard for editing graphics such as digital photographs, Illustrator is the standard for creating vector drawings, and InDesign is the standard for desktop publishing. While Adobe’s software is excellent, it’s also expensive and requires a monthly subscription ever since Adobe stopped selling their software individually.

For now, every professional graphics artist needs to learn Adobe’s software, but if you’re on a budget, there’s now an excellent trio of similar software called Affinity Photo (a Photoshop rival), Affinity Designer (an Illustrator rival), and Affinity Publisher (an InDesign rival). Best of all, each Affinity program only costs $49.99 so the combined cost will be far less than subscribing to Adobe’s software suite.

Both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are available today with Affinity Publisher coming sometime in 2016. All three programs will be designed to work together, work with standard Adobe files such as .psd Photoshop files and .ai Illustrator files, cost far less, but offer features comparable to Adobe’s software. If you’re a graphics artist on a budget, you can create your work in Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer and export your files into standard Photoshop or Illustrator files, and no one will know (or care) which software you used.

Affinity Designer has already won Apple’s Design award for 2015 so if Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher are as well designed as Affinity Designer, you can expect excellent performance from all three software titles.

So if you’re ready to dump Adobe’s subscription plan, take a serious look at Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer as more than adequate replacements. You may be surprised that you can get more for your money without sacrificing features, compatibility, or performance.

To learn more about Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, click here.

Adobe Clones

Posted on April 26, 2015 by admin Posted in Software Leave a comment

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What it is: Adobe has set the standard for professional graphics tools with software like Photoshop and Illustrator. However, both Photoshop and Illustrator cost over $500, which puts them out of the price range of non-professional graphic artists.

If you’re an aspiring graphic artists, you probably can’t afford the full price of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. However, you may be able to buy the student edition of either program. That way you can afford the full version to use and learn for your professional career.

For everyone else who may need graphics editing capabilities but won’t need all the professional features of Photoshop or Illustrator, there are plenty of alternatives. Perhaps the most obvious alternative is the $69 Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is designed for consumers but which contains the vast majority of graphics editing tools that you’ll need.

Besides being basically identical to Photoshop, Photoshop Elements costs less and is easier to use. Once you get used to Photoshop Elements, you’ll have no problems migrating to the professional version of Photoshop later.

For another Photoshop alternative, look at Pixelmator, a $29.99 program that only runs on the Macintosh. Pixelmator’s low cost and advanced features have made it a favorite among graphic artists who aren’t wedded to Adobe Photoshop’s user interface and file formats.

While many graphic artists rely on Photoshop, some prefer Illustrator. Since Adobe doesn’t offer a low-cost version of Illustrator, vector-drawing graphic artists can look at the $49.99 Affinity Designer program instead.

Affinity Designer even won Apple’s Best of 2014 award for Macintosh software so that alone tells you that its stable, full-featured, and powerful. Affinity Designer can import and export Illustrator files if you need file compatibility, but it’s probably better as a stand alone program for anyone who doesn’t need the cost and complexity of Adobe Illustrator.

With programs like Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator, and Affinity Designer, you can now get top-notch graphics programs for a fraction of the cost for Adobe’s full-featured, professional tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. Unless you absolutely need Photoshop and Illustrator, you can save a bundle of money using low-cost but still powerful alternatives instead.