Is there any real alternatives to adobe

hargi · 21 May 2013 at 14:04

For ages I have used adobe fireworks for images and logo's. Then I used a trial of illustrator and things are so much easier and you can create vectors.

Is there any real alternatives to illustrator and the adobe suite when it comes to logo design and general web dev?

GravyMonster · 21 May 2013 at 14:12

Not really.

You've got GIMP and other basic image manipulation tools, but for feature set, nothing touches Adobe CS.

Which is a real shame considering their new ****-poor pricing model.

hargi · 21 May 2013 at 14:44

I know, I have put off and put off buying into the adobe cloud thing but may have to bite the bullet

uniQ · 21 May 2013 at 15:10

Find an older boxed copy? I'm still happily running CS5 with no compelling reason to upgrade.

Sir SpankalotUK · 21 May 2013 at 15:13

Coreldraw is about the only viable alternative to illustrator, but haven't touched a version of that in years. Inkscape is a poor man's illustrator if you have a need of something free. Oddly enough inkscape has the option to reverse a paths direction which illustrator does not, in case you are messing around with svg web tech (something like lazylinepainter).

D.P. · 21 May 2013 at 18:41

To me Inkscape is pretty much as good as illustrator for what I do.

annaharris · 22 May 2013 at 12:21

What do you think about corel Draw?

peterwalkley · 22 May 2013 at 13:45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Iw9q2X9cU

valve90210 · 22 May 2013 at 15:41

I actually find Inkscape nicer to use in a lot of instances than Illustrator really. I find illustrator more fiddly and things like the handles for the curves are so small it's easy to accidentally select the item behind etc etc.

Fireworks I see no reason to use. Photoshop is a joy, though has become more and more complicated as more and more tools have been added.

Don't get me wrong a lot of them are brilliant but go back to version 5.5 (not CS5.5 - version 5.5) and things are a lot less complex but just as powerful!

Sir SpankalotUK · 22 May 2013 at 17:47

I use cs6 pretty much religiously now (I work for a print firm so we have to have the latest version). Before CS6, cs3 was the package I personally preferred. Adobe has been tweaking some of the tools to work better of late. Clone tool in photoshop, shows what will happen whilst hovering. Content aware function for expanding pictures works to a point. Illustrators page size tool saves me oddles of time on a daily basis. That's even before I think Indesign is the go-to package for page layout (as opposed to Quark Xpress now).

They need to price a package for home users!, still not sure about this creative cloud business, time will tell I suppose.