Soo, it took me a while but I’m now finally (yes, finally) Adobe CC Free.
What does it mean to us, except that you wouldn’t use Adobe CC Apps anymore and would use other tools. Well, this might be interesting to you all who have problems with Adobe Creative Cloud which is expensive and it is crashy at moments, especially in last two iterations.
What is gives up, why moving from Adobe – well, for me it is big move because I can’t buy Adobe CC here in Croatia without annual payment of almost 1000€ without paying for a month-to-month as I would like. Until now I mostly well pirated Adobe apps, and even when I found some cheap and seems legit variants I paid (yup, paid) for them to find that those versions are shared accounts or accounts with hacked passwords which is problematic when user logs you out and you need to login again and remove computers which you think that is not in use.
So, to which apps I moved – here is list of apps that I tried and on which I started to use after Adobe apps.
Adobe Photoshop – for this app there is lot of alternatives, but I have switched to Affinity Photo. Yup, Serif’s Affinity Photo. Why – just because in version 1.8 it supports Smart Objects from Photoshop. This keeped me away from moving on Photoshop, but now when it is available in Affinity Photo I said finally – Good bye, Auf wiedersehen Photoshop, welcome Affinity. As backup apps I’m running GIMP and Paint.net just because I know how to use them and they are my favorites for it. Just to know it – I purchased Affinity tools view edit and note below.
Adobe Illustrator – and for this there is few apps which I use and main is Affinity Designer and Inkscape. Both are great, but Inkscape is free and open-source which helps me when I’m on my Linux machine. Both apps are great and both are functional for my usage of them which is mostly for small logo creation or for edits on SVG files.
Adobe Premiere Pro – for this app I have already alternative in Sony (now Magix) Vegas Pro 13 which I bought (yup, bought) while back on Steam when it was on big sale. I always preferred Sony Vegas because it was easier to learn how-to edit in it. Before buying Vegas Pro I bought Movie Studio 13 Platinum just because I wanted to get into legit usage of Sony tools in old company. Plus, on this Winter Sale on Steam I also bought Movavi Video Studio which helped me to create simple edits with cool transitions for project which never saw lights on YouTube but it was shown on one presentation. For my Linux rig I use Kdenlive which is good alternative even to Sony Vegas Pro.
Adobe After Effects – and this is weird app which I used once or twice mostly, and for all things after that I never touched it, but if I would ever need it I will use DaVinci Resolve with Fusion. For now, for small VFX I can use Sony Vegas Pro.
Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader – this is my old toolkit which is replaced with couple of online apps for merging PDF files and I use native exports from apps to PDF. Simple as it is. And for Reader, well, SumatraPDF is great and also new browsers have good PDF readers.
Adobe Dreamweaver – who the duck use it, really?!? I have switched from it to Code Editors like Notepad++, VS Code and Sublime Text (bought it when I worked in previous company) and for WYSIWYG editors there a lot of alternatives like Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace and for WordPress there are good editors like Elementor and WPBakery.
Adobe XD – oh boy. I used it few times and found better alternatives in Figma (which is best app for all Operating Systems because it is web based), Gravit Designer and Lunacy (which can load Sketch files).
This is just my personal apps which I started using after Adobe Creative Cloud for as long as I know for it and previously as Creative Studio for years. It is now basically relearning new shortcuts for Affinity apps and learning new stuff about apps like Figma which I started using lately.
Otherwise, this was long journey which started in September of 2019. and it is finished now with release of 1.8 for Affinity “Suite”.
Note: You can purchase license for bargain price on eBay from seller kingsoft2020 – he is fast with delivery and he will respond to your answer fast.
Cover Photo is personal screenshot of programs in “usage”.