Alternatives To Adobe's Creative Suite? 695
jsepeta writes "I've been using Adobe products for years, and own several older versions of the products from their Creative Suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Acrobat Pro, and Dreamweaver. I'd like to teach some graphic design and web production skills to my coworkers in the marketing department, and realize that most of them can't afford $2500 to buy Adobe's premium suite and, frankly, shouldn't need to because there should be competitive products on the market. But I can't seem to locate software for graphic design and printing that outputs CMYK files that printing companies will accept. And I'm not familiar with any products that are better than FrontPage yet still easy to use for Web design. Any suggestions? Our company is notoriously frugal and would certainly entertain the idea of using open source products if we could implement them in a way that doesn't infringe upon our Microsoft-centric hegemony / daily work tasks in XP."
Re:just pirate it (Score:2, Informative)
How 'bout GIMP [gimp.org]?
Well... (Score:4, Informative)
and
CMYK support for The GIMP [blackfiveservices.co.uk]
Re:just pirate it (Score:1, Informative)
no alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe try out paint.net? http://www.getpaint.net/ [getpaint.net]
Open-Source for sure (Score:5, Informative)
Photoshop -> Gimp [gimp.org]
Illustrator -> Inkscape [inkscape.org]
InDesign -> Scribus [scribus.net]
Web Design -> Kompozer [kompozer.net], which is a bugfix release of Nvu [nvu.com] (there's actually a lot of these, I've also heard Microsoft Visual Web Dev Express [microsoft.com], which has a lot of praise from various people)
Not sure of a good PDF editor, but it looks like this claims to do the trick (though i'm sure is nowhere near the level of Acrobat Pro): PDFEdit [petricek.net]. Be warned it looks like it's a cygwin port to windows...
I can't guarantee that those will all live up to your expectations, but I am fairly familiar with most of that software, and it certainly gets the job done.
Scribus (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no alternative (Score:4, Informative)
it's good for limited stuff and for getting started, but you hit the barrier after a while. there's too much stuff that's too hard/clumsy/hacky in gimp.
Re:Scribus (Score:4, Informative)
Open Source Beer (Score:2, Informative)
As a complete amateur I have enjoyed Nvu for its interface.
other alternatives may be
http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php [aptana.com]
http://www.inkscape.org/ [inkscape.org] (quite good, but haven't used it for web applications)
http://kompozer.net/ [kompozer.net]
ZDNet [zdnet.co.uk] has an article on that very subject.
Last Windows App I run...CorelDrawX3 (Score:2, Informative)
But I increasingly create alot of my artwork in Inkscape as vector exported to target size in bitmaps (like glass looking buttons...) that I used to do 100% as bitmap. Makes custom art soooo much faster.
Krita in the KOffice suite has CYMK, nice controls, but lacks the vast the plugin library we have become accustomed to. It will come I am sure.
Re:Let's all suggest the Gimp... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yeah? [cinepaint.org]
My short list (Score:1, Informative)
Vector Graphics (Illustrator alternatives): I prefer Xara Xtreme (which has an open sourced version available) over Inkscape.
Desktop Publishing (Indesign alternatives): Scribus looks the business, can anyone tell me if Scribus can import RGB Tiff's (for example) and colour separate them for print?
Video Editing (Premiere alternatives): Cinelerra - A pain to install, crashes like a madman and exporting video is trial and error; but it beats all the other simple video editors hands down.
Web Design (Dreamweaver alternatives): There's a few out there, but none as good as Dreamweaver by far. I do most of my web design using PHP and hardcoding the websites with xhtml and CSS. I personally use Eclipse with a few choice plugins for this purpose.
Cinelerra and Scribus only run under Linux (although there may be MacOS versions?). This may not be suitable for your situation, but heck, how much does it take to install a dual boot system on a computer nowadays?
All these apps are pretty good for educational purposes. I wouldn't dare argue they're any good for production purposes, as the closed-source products are simply miles ahead in every way. If you're starting out and can't afford the full packages though, or are only interested in learning the concepts/creating a portfolio etc. then they do the job just fine and dandy
And just for the heck of it, a good 3D modelling/animation program is Blender.
Re:Best replacements for Dreamweaver (Score:3, Informative)
Alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
There are many alternatives (Score:4, Informative)
I am a professional Photoshop user and have become one thanks to the vast amount of tutorials and discussions that relate directly to Photoshop. I know Gimp and I know Paint Shop Pro, but aside from the fact that none of these tools are quite as extensive as Photoshop, you still want that large community to back you up when you need help.
To answer the question of the main article, I would say that the best alternative to Photoshop is yet another Adobe product: Photoshop Elements. It's a capped version of Photoshop at some $100 in retail stores. This is fully comparable to Paint Shop Pro, which is about the same price.
Re:Best replacements for Dreamweaver (Score:3, Informative)
They don't.. but if they want to make a dynamic webpage, for a company, for money, they better know HTML. When a page is dynamic, the page needs to be designed with that in mind. You're not designing a flyer, you're designing something that can change drastically depending on what flows into it.
Basically, a web designer who doesn't know html is going to have a hard time finding a job.
Serif - not free but inexpensive (Score:2, Informative)
Off-topic (ish) (Score:4, Informative)
Cut a long story short, someone seems to be almost ready to finally do this, Pixelmator [pixelmator.com]. Cheap, neat and looks like it's easy to use [tuaw.com]. Not a real photoshop competitor, but then again most people pirate photoshop for light photo retouching and occasional messing around. This looks like it could handle what a lot of casual photoshop users want without the insane price tag.
Photoshop vs PaintShop Pro (Score:2, Informative)
I'm a member of a local camera and photography club, and just about everyone there who uses digital phot editing software uses some version or another of Adobe Photoshop. It's very good, very capable and is the de facto standard.
I've sat with people and watched them do manipulations using Photoshop and I have to say that so far I have seen little if anything done in Photoshop that I couldn't replicate in PaintShopPro (for general editing - Photoshop can do some pretty way out things with filters, but that's not really my thing)
For printing, don't try to cheap out (Score:5, Informative)
If all you're trying to do is educate the users about CMYK, then of course you can use pretty much any software that works nicely with a desktop inkjet printer that can do CMYK proofing (in a pinch Photoshop can be used as a RIP for this purpose assuming you have one copy of it). Of course no proof is ever the same as a real print, so eventually people will hit a wall in their real knowledge until big $$$ is spent on real jobs that you get back from the printer and realize were not quite as good as they thought they'd be.
Re:no alternative (Score:1, Informative)
Re:no alternative (Score:5, Informative)
For everything CS2 and previous:
Edit -> Preferences -> Set "History States" up to 1000.
For CS3:
Edit -> Preferences -> Performace -> Set "History States" up to 1000.
That enough undos for you?
Why the default setting is only 20, I don't know; I guess for performance reasons.
As for your other objections, I can't relate. I'm not a programmer, I'm a designer.
As with every professional application there is a learning curve. Once you have that out of the way, Photoshop is excellent and the industry standard for a very good reason.
Re:Best replacements for Dreamweaver (Score:1, Informative)
There's also bluefish and quanta.
Re:Let's all suggest the Gimp... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
DOT GAIN: Dot gain is the amount a dot of ink expands on paper (because paper is porous) which makes it appear larger. There is far more dot gain on, say, newsprint than on magazine paper, because of the porousness of the paper. There is a pretty good graphical representation of this here. [umax.co.uk] The first gradient represents the information sent to a printer or press. The second gradient is the printed output from that printer or press. Since the dots expand on paper and appear bigger, or more densely packed, the output appears darker than intended. By inputting the actual dot gain from a particular press (which can be affected by dozens of variables), Photoshop is able to compensate, adjusting the values sent to the printer so that what we see onscreen more accurately matches what we see in print.
INK PROFILES: Cyan ink isn't always really Cyan ink...especially when it's printed on off-white paper. (In other words, nearly all paper.) There are several different ink manufacturers and their inks differ visually, and there are thousands of different papers each with their own color. The SNAP test will actually measure the color of the paper itself, and the values of 100%C, 50%C, 40%C-30%M-30%Y (a neutral gray) and Photoshop is able to use these numbers, again, to adjust the information sent to press to best compensate for the weaknesses of the ink and paper.
Now, I haven't used GIMP besides casually opening it and getting confused by the interface, but I just looked in Preferences and apparently you can't even use CMYK colorspace AT ALL, let alone the custom inks and paper settings that are completely NECESSARY for any serious designer / publisher. Just supporting CMYK colorspace is NOT good enough. Without support for custom profiles there is not a snowball's chance in hell that print professionals would use this program anytime soon.
Given Adobe CS's ability to coordinate these ink profiles throughout all their programs, IMO there is no other viable option for someone who will be sending their files to press. Not if they want accurate color output.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
A good print service should be able to take input in any non-stupid format and use that as the starting point for a Photoshop workflow. Indeed, most print services I've worked with wouldn't expect customers - even customers in creative fields - to screw around with the technical details themselves.
The main pitfall for non-experts producing artwork for print is resolution. Again and again I run into people not understanding that things which look great on their big screens are still going to look pixelly when printed out on A1 board.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
I worked in the newspaper industry until really recently. We either - built the ads FOR the customers - accepted their crappy MS-Publisher built ads and did the best we could with them - or worked with high-end clients who had their own graphic design dept and were capable of using our sourced CMYK profiles.
In the first case, we were handling the color profiles ourselves, and just had to reject the scanned-off-a-fax art the client wanted to use. In the second case, the ad was usually so crappy-looking that the color profile was the least of our worries. And in the third case, the client was sufficiently educated to understand the concept of calibrating and color profiles.
I don't know what the OP was asking about specifically, as he/she was REALLY vague, but I do stand on the importance of color profiles, especially in the newspaper industry, where printed output is DRASTICALLY different from what you see onscreen. (Typical newspaper dot-gain is around 30%..)
As for the rest (Score:5, Informative)
However, one may be able replace some of the other software depending on how you used it. The original poster framed the scenario as tools for the marketing department to use, which clearly lowers the bar in terms of expectations as to what level of competency will be applied. Marketers are not designers, so it would appear as though if Software X does a reasonable job approximating most tasks of Adobe Y, then one can adopt it.
Photoshop - You're unlikely to replace that one. Although, someone else mentioned Pixel [kanzelsberger.com] which could possibly cut the mustard depending on your needs. Otherwise, there really is nothing to compare to Photoshop.
Illustrator - Definitely have a strong look at Inkscape [inkscape.org]. I've toyed with it for 2 or 3 years to keep tabs on its' development, after being fairly impressed during my first run through. These days it has continued to advance and I'd suggest it's ready for the professional world. You can create substantially complex pieces with Inkscape which will probably far out-pace the ability of your Marketing department to bother learning in the first place. While it might be missing a pet feature or two, the bottomline is that Inkscape is ready to be taken seriously as a replacement for Illustrator (and, previously, FreeHand).
InDesign - Professionals already use Scribus [scribus.net] to handle multipage full color layouts sent directly to commercial print houses, so it's gotta be worth your time to look at. CMYK separation, PDF generation,and much of the toolsets you'd expect to see in Quark or InDesign; certainly more than enough power for your Marketing department.
Acrobat Pro - If you're heavily using features like annotation, collaboration, form creation, et cetera, then you probably won't be replacing Acrobat Professional. Nothing can touch it. However, if all you need is to be able to allow your Marketing droids to generate PDFs from documents they create in other software, then you can slap PDFCreator [pdfforge.org] on their little Windows boxen. Remember that OpenOffice already has the ability to turn any of their normal documents and spreadsheets into a PDF at a click of a button. Surely, you've dumped MS Office by now.
Dreamweaver - This is a tough one because you should probably rethink your environment to realize you most likely don't really want Dreamweaver to be used. Unless you're just using Slashdot to conveniently survey the geek mindshare, the odds are that WYSIWYG is an old paradigm no longer needed by most scenarios. What you probably want is some kind of content management engine which your key tech person(s) can administer such that your Marketing department can monkey with the website(s). One engine could be adapted to various websites, if you proposed such a need. If I were to suppose someone was trolling Slashdot, then I would mention Quanta Plus [kdewebdev.org] before realizing Marketing droids would be helplessly confined to Windows and thus I'd point to Nvu [nvu.com] as your capable hero.
But, really, if an evaluation of your technical needs leads you back to WYSIWYG, then you've made a logical error somewhere. The days for that hobbled solution are definitely over.
There you have it! Free and open source software is up to the challenge is most regards. Where there are shortcomings, there are adept proprietary solutions for far, far less than the onerous cost of Adobe
Re:Open-Source for sure (Score:4, Informative)
Scribus will probably be hot stuff in three to five years, but for now, it's low-end desktop publishing, only a couple of steps above Word. In particular, Scribus currently offers only rudimentary support for tables, which was a dealbreaker for me.
There's LaTeX, of course, but I'm not yet ready to drink that particular ocean. LaTeX is oriented toward document design, whereas I need page design. I need to move the illo on page 43 two picas to the right, and then I need to look at it and decide to move it back. Dipping in and out of a config file to do that isn't appealing.
For my current DTP project, I had to move from Linux back to WinXP just so I could use InDesign. InDesign is a great program, but even so... groan.
CMYK (Score:5, Informative)
I don't consider lack of 16 bit RGB support a crippling problem for all workflows. Certainly, along with limited RAW support and lack of any sort of ICC colour management it's a problem for high-end photography work, but it's not really a killer for many uses. In fact, the newspaper I work with uses 8-bit colour all the way through its workflow at the moment - and while we'd probably benefit from moving to 16-bit colour for image archival and manipulation, it really doesn't make that much difference for many uses.
I have a much bigger problem with the lack of ICC colour support and CMYK support. You need at least one or the other for a print-targeted workflow, with both strongly preferable. If you only have ICC colour support, you'll need DTP apps that can do the right thing with tagged images, and you won't want to be working on really difficult images that need fine-tuning after colour space conversion. And if you only have CMYK support you'd better have a decent external tool with ICC colour support to the RGB->CMYK conversion, or the result will be muck.
It's exciting to see all the work going in to GEGL (the core for the new GIMP revision with much-improved support of ICC colour, multiple colour spaces, higher bit depths, non-destructive workflow, etc) and I can't wait until some of that starts appearing in a reasonably usable form. Their approach to non-destructive editing & history is the first thing I've seen in GIMP that makes me sit up and take notice when working on Photoshop.
Re:no alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Photoshop by itself can be had for much cheaper, especially the student version.
Depends on your needs. (Score:2, Informative)
There is no doubt that Adobes tools are good and that there is little in the way of serious competition. The reason for this either you earn enough money that the asking price doesn't really factor into things or you pirate it. Lets face it - piracy of this sort of thing is rampant. The effect of this is well little in the way of serious competition.
Adobe's aquisition of Macromedia also hurt competition quite a bit. Macromedia was leading Adobe in the web based field and was the most viable compeditor in a few other markets.
Anyways there are alternatives. First stop is to check out the Corel Suite - I personally don't recommend it, But I know plenty of businesses who use it to make real money and employ real people.
On the OSS side there is Scribus for DTP/PDF Creation. Its fairly fast moving - I recommend version 1.3.4 which was just released. It is capable of professional work and has been used to that end. It may or may not have everything you require for prepress - for me bleed setting is the one thing I need which hasn't been implemented yet. One thing to note is that scribus lets you create scripted pdf documents.
Inkscape is another very worthy tool - While it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Illustrator.. I find it has all the functionality that I would use on a regular basis. Again this project is fast moving at the moment
so try and get the latest version.
For photo editing there is Krita & the Gimp - you won't have access to krita yet unless you are running on free OS (I think) but it supports a lot of the things that the gimp does not including HDR and CMYK colour spaces. the main area it falls down is performance. The gimp is not so bad or good as people make out. It has a its own logic on how to do things (unfortunately this logic is typically alien to somebody who has spent years using photoshop)... When you are used to it can be quite smooth (I had this pointed out to me by somebody watching me work) - but this is all a moot point if the Gimp does not provide all the features you need. It may not.
The webdev I am sure has been covered elsewhere - In the OSS world there are good programmers editors and good basic WYSIWYG environments. Nothing that gives you the mix of power and convienience that Dreamweaver does. Still there are alternatives depending on your requirements.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Informative)
Branding is where this is very important. I used to work for a company that built the complete package for companies - their print material, their letterheads, their website, and finally their logo and brand colors to tie it all together.
We had more problems with print shops that accepted RGB, as opposed to those that took CMYK for the work. Pantone may not be important to every day Kinko's report printing, but if you're doing logo work and professional design of things like brochures, business cards, etc where color is important, there's no way around it.
Re:CYMK TIFF is a backwards tradition that must di (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
I use Photoshop at home on my main computer but I use Paint.net on all my other computers including my work computer (my company doesn't want to buy photoshop).
I tried GIMP but didn't really like it, Paint.NET is incredibly easy to use and has most of the features that most people need most often. Paint.NET also passed the the test of being easy enough that my mother could use it. Where Photoshop and GIMP both failed. While it doesn't even come close to the features offered by Photoshop it's good enough for the tasks that most people need it for. That and unlike GIMP I've never had problems with crashes or anything else.
Now if someone could point me towards an Open Source/Free alternative to Adobe Premiere (video editing) I'd be in heaven.
OSalt (Score:2, Informative)
Photoshop [osalt.com] > Paint.NET [osalt.com]
Illustrator [osalt.com] > Inkscape [osalt.com]
Acrobat [osalt.com] > PDF Creator [osalt.com]
Flash [osalt.com] > Open Laszlo [osalt.com]
Dreamweaver [osalt.com] > Nvu [osalt.com]...or a good text editor
and so on. I urge everybody to check it out though if you're looking for some more bits of software to play with.
We're switching TO Photoshop from Gimp, because... (Score:4, Informative)
GIMP does not support Pantone(tm) colors, so we cannot use it for accurate color matching. This means that, even when we get the color exactly the way we want it on our screen and printer, it is likely to come out way different on a professional printer, i.e., the one your printer will likely use to print biz cards, letterhead, trade show banners, etc. For example, some of the professional HP printers are notorious for rendering what you think as blue into a purple-ish color. We end up squandering everyone's time in a guess-the-actual-color game to get even close to the color we intended.
With Pantone support, the problem is solved because we'll select the EXACT colors we want using the standard color swatches from their kit, and our printer will be able to reliably print these EXACT colors.
Since the info I've found indicates that GIMP does not even plan to support Pantone, we must switch, probably to Photoshop, if for no other reason that it is the industry standard, and we'll have a greater level of exchange and collaboration with our printers.
So, I'm sorry to say that my open-source bias has again bitten me in the arse. I knew better than to have skipped past my product research, but I just went for the OS solution. Now, I've squandered valuable time in a startup biz learning the quirks of software that will now be replaced. There, I've said it, so mod me down.
Don't support backward copyright. (Score:3, Informative)
It's a shame to see people like the parent being so blindly conditioned to the current backward model of intellectual property. How long will we have to use buggywhips to fly jet planes?
It's an even bigger shame to see people use software from companies that created and perpetuate that "intellectual property" model. Every person trained to use their tools is a vote for their software and model. Scribus, inkscape, GIMP, bluefish and many other tools make good replacements for non free software.
Getting all of it to work on XP is another matter. It there is really something XP has that he needs, dual booting or Parallels should be used. Like all software, free tools are much easier to install and maintain on free software.
Re:Well... (Score:1, Informative)
Other than that, people are running Fusion (generally on windows) and even After Effects (particularly for small-to-mid-sized shops, but even for work at some high-end places). And AE is Windows/Mac.
So basically my point is, speaking as someone who works in the industry, you're pretty damned likely to see people working on Windows or OS X when you walk in the door of a post house. Linux, sure, sometimes. But honestly, never Cinepaint.
And don't even ask about editing.
No one ever, ever edits with half-baked Linux editing tools.
Or at least lives to tell about it.
Dreamweaver replacement (Score:3, Informative)
Re:just pirate it (Score:2, Informative)
1) Custom shading effects that can't be represented correctly in any format other than CDR, although it pretends to do so with PDFs.
2) Crashes more than PageMaker on complex (> 8 pages with 4 elements per page...) documents (even on the recently updated X3)
3) A confused sense of colour management where colour spaces aren't simply unavailable, but misrepresented, often to the point that it looks like someone sent a l*a*b document through the RIP...
4) Horrible object frame rendering, such that contents only appear on certain zoom levels, even though clicking or selecting the objects will highlight the conents...
5) Poorly implemented file backup strategy that decides to randomly automatically backup a 100 MB file without warning, by saving a complete copy of it under a different name
5a) Poorly implemented file recovery strategy such that it locks itself into a repeating crash/recovery cycle after crashing to multiple borked files
6) Poorly implemented file structure which borks an entire document if some kinds of external linkages/files aren't immediately available
7) Poorly implemented typeface/font substitution strategy which does not appear to know about TTF/ODF hinting
8) Files not previewable at more than 96x96 DPI by any non-Corel app
9) Exported EPS files that are somehow neither postscript, nor enhanced postscript
10) Poor handling of latin-1, especially j/k on glyphs outside of those in common use in Western Europe.
I would have to disagree that it's "very high quality, at a quarter of the price", especially when poor software design/implementation choices would cost me as much in lost productivity in one day as purchasing CS3.
Finding right alternative for Adobe (Score:2, Informative)
My long answer is:
When looking for an affordable alternative to CS, you need to look at different things. First, the feature set. You mention that you're looking for printing and CMYK output, which tells me that you look for a package that does photo-editing, vector illustration and page layout, all this with with the capability to output for professional printers (e.g. color separation and more). I guess you're also looking for color management and potentially also for spot color support such as Pantone.
The second aspect you should consider is the actual user of the product. As you mention, you look at a product that can be used and learned by people who are not necessarily trained in graphics, and who might also not be the most power-users when it comes to computers in general. If the software could help them a little throughout the process of "discovery" it, that would certainly help you with your training.
In addition, as you're talking about your company, the IT department might have a say in the software you use. According to your post, you're mainly in a Windows environment, so I guess the IT team uses a tool such as SMS to manage the desktop software. They will be looking for a package that is network deployable and easy to maintain on multiple computers.
Now, if you're a CS user, you are certainly also looking at a package that is compatible with your product (PSD, AI and PDF file formats) and potentially also that is not to difficult for you to get used to, so that you can have both side by side.
If this matches what you're looking for, I would recommend you try out CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 and see for yourself. If you have any questions about the product, a great place to go is http://coreldraw.com/ [coreldraw.com].
And to add a little disclaimer: I am part of the CorelDRAW product management team, so some of you might consider this comment biased. I understand that and all I am saying is that you should find out for yourself and get your product questions answered by Corel of the CorelDRAW community.
Gérard