Adobe: Acknowledging Their Future

[PricelineNegotiator]

It's probably a good time to start thinking about our industry's massive reliance on Adobe, and how "if" they end up going down the drain, what happens to our billions of files and assets? It'd be good to work on an open-source alternative to Adobe and Affinity.

I just learned about this crazy issue we are having at our store with Adobe Acrobat (newer versions), where if you don't have a discrete graphics cards/tons of video RAM, you end up getting seizure inducing flickering when opening a PDF with a lot of vector graphics. There is no fix for this besides installing a 2021 version of Acrobat, and the bug posts have been around for years. Doesn't matter which OS you are on. It's been affecting everyone besides myself, only because I nabbed a cheap GTX 1060 when I built my desktop.

Tried to use the Adobe website yesterday and I was stuck in an infinite refresh loop and couldn't activate a font.

Day before that I tried to alter our CC plan and was met with an unknown error when at the last step.

You can't download versions of almost all Adobe programs more than 2 major releases back.

Obviously these are just my personal issues recently, and probably just the tip of the iceberg for what we collectively face.

Does this concern anyone else?

P.S. I don't care about Affinity. It's not open source. It was bought by Canva to mitigate their potential competition.

 

[G5MacMan]

Adobe Creative Suite. "Expensive and Terrible"
we have the same issue +
Constant daily nagging about " Are you sharing your account"
Acrobat using cash'd versions of the same file if you dont change the file name
i could go on, and on

 

[wonderings]

I personally don't want Adobe to go away or fade away. I remember the time before the Creative Suite when people were all using different versions of different software. It forced us to upgrade a few times because our client used a newer version than we did. With Adobe CC now it is not something I even think about, everyone is on the same version and I will say it is so much simpler that way. That being said Adobe seem slow to address small issues that are there for the modern printer. One that has bugged me for a long time is that Adobe does not give us the ability to make 100% K crop marks. For digital printing this is fine and preferred, especially if just printing a 1 colour black job so we don't get dinged with a full colour click charge. I understand the need for it for offset, but print has evolved and many shops are digital only now. Give us the choice. I am no software coder but I have trouble believing it would be that difficult to somehow implement custom colours for crop marks.

 

[jwheeler]

It'd be good to work on an open-source alternative to Adobe and Affinity.

I teach graphic design in an alternative education program, but many of my students can't afford to pay the monthly subscription for the Adobe Suite. Affinity is the closest alternative that I've personally used quite a bit and feel it's a great replacement. I did a brief write-up about it here.

However, since you mention open-source alternatives and want to stay away from Affinity, here is the list I give to my students of free design tools (besides Affinity/Canva) which also includes web-based software for students who may not own a PC or have a Chromebook and can't install certain software:

Photoshop Alternatives:

• Photopea (web-based, no need to install software)
• Gimp (Open-source computer-based software)

Illustrator Alternatives:

• Vectorpea (web-based, no need to install software)
• Inkscape (Open-source Computer-Based Software)

Adobe InDesign Alternatives:

• Scribus (Open-source Computer-Based Software)
• Google Docs (web-based, no need to install software)