Photosho alternative

[David Milisock]

Perhaps the graphic designers are more interested in coming up with creative solutions to solve their customer's marketing/communications issues than in futzing around with a Windows box to make it run.

What do you mean futzing around? You install the software and it just works. Just built a system for a client, assembled the parts installed the software, updated the software and delivered the device. All printers and scanners (all less then 5 years old) simply installed and worked. Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. Kind of like assembling a kids puzzle.

Working on a PC, it's been awhile for you hasn't it?

I took an old XP laptop 64 bit Intel and upgraded I to Windows 7 Pro 64 bit for a clients daughter, everything installed all drivers simply installed, all devices worked, no special work around procedures. The unit was 8 years old when I did it.

Windows just works now.

 

[David Milisock]

I just bought an M.2 SSD for my desktop at work. Been using 2 SSDs in RAID 0 at home for quite a while, figured it was finally time!

I did my first SSD about 5 or 6 years ago I believe and I haven't looked back, typical installation now is OS on a 512 SSD and 1 or 2 - 1 or 2 TB drives for storage. NVidia display cards all the way.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

The Intel 600 series SSD's on M.2 form factor are extremely cheap and fast, and they just released this week. I'm excited to try it out, as 1600 MB/s is screaming fast and my startup time can't be 15 minutes anymore.

I echo your sentiment about Windows 10, it's a perfect example of an OS done right. OS X, and what is soon to become mac OS, are pretty solid, but they are made to do only a few things (for which you pay a LOT of money for) and you have very limited upgrade capabilities. Overall, I do not have to adjust my thought pattern whether I'm on a Mac or PC, but it has to be said that if something needs to be done quickly without any fuss, do it on a PC. I think Macs fit in very well with the atmosphere surrounding graphic designers, so as long as they are turning out quality projects, then I say it's all justified. I have yet to find someone that can show me how to change default print settings on a Mac, however.

 

[David Milisock]

PricelineNegotiator I can only say that computers are the now and future and when you're not moving forward you're automatically moving backward. You'll be mentally stimulated keeping up with the technology of the systems which of course means changes to keep up with in terms of software.

I write articles all the time and therefore look at different software and from a perspective of 42 years in the graphics industry I'm many times embarrassed by the lack of thinking.

Researching RAW converters and Photoshop alternatives a month ago lead me to resourcemagonline and a few statements by Pratik Naik. I saw the article and looked at his work and it is by far awesome for ad work. It's not my cup of tea as all the people look like mannequins, the author was very good in balancing the statements so the article was thought provoking.

After the read and some research even though Mr. Naiks statements were negative on AfterShot Pro 3 I found them to be less then correct. The problem being that many people who review software cannot separate their familiarity with their software of choice with the new software so many of the statements were due to not recognizing simple differences in default application settings.

The other observation is that after looking at his work, nothing he was doing couldn't be done in Corel Photo-PAINT X8 or PaintShop Pro X8 or X9. Photo-PAINT comes with CorelDraw X8 at no cost and PaintShop Pro is $80.

The graphics industry is saddled with costs, even a small wide format printer cutter (54") is around $16,000 to $20,000. Press work flows run into the millions, RIPs at easily $40,000 alone.

So what are we doing? The same crap we did in 1985! We use a MAC, an image editor, a drawing program and a page layout program, we link files that can and often do produce conflicts and we do as we did for 30 years. Missing fonts. missing links, difficult, time consuming or quality compromising resolutions to transparency issues.

I started looking at alternatives in 1991 and never looked back. PC instead of MAC, inexpensive easy to upgrade continually minimizing work times and labor costs. I stopped using Adobe products as much as possible because my work flow was 98% under 16 pages. I use CorelDraw, we embed images, we color manage, we handle transparency issues within the application on the fly.

Currently I believe I'm near to resolving my last PITA which is rasterizing lousy PDF files for design shops. We get a trade show graphics created in InDesign, Illustrator elements, PSD elements placed with overlapping transparency and SMALL FONTS.

There is NO QUALITY INEXPENSIVE FIX in an Adobe work flow. If it were CorelDraw a few mouse clicks and everything but the fonts is rasterized and the work is perfect, but for Adobe we simply have to rasterize everything because the end user demands the job in 1 day and for $80. I simply don't want to reward Adobe for their shortsightedness by paying for Photoshop or Acrobat to do the rasterizing. It's smarter to develop a new work flow based on something less costly especially if that actually expands our capabilities, which many of these new software actually do.

 

[AP90]

David, I have read your post on this forum ever since I joined a few years ago. You have a vast amount of knowledge in your field, and I along with I'm sure everyone else, are very appreciative of you sharing it with us. I do have a bit of a problem with this thread, and maybe you've covered it in others but I'm not sure.

The problem I have is that you don't seem to acknowledge any pro's/benefits of Adobe and Mac products, and have never mentioned a con of coreldraw or any PC that you've built. I understand we all have our favorites and preferences, but I always have a problem taking an opinion seriously that is all for one product and totally against another product, even to go as far as to say when you do need it you still try and find an alternative to it. I'd like more objective opinions on things because I have a very hard time believing that everyone who is using Adobe products and Mac's in the printing/design industry is making a mistake and cannot be efficient doing so. Just my $.02.

 

[David Milisock]

AP90, there are issues with all software, the cons of CorelDraw certainly but more so Corel corporation is that they have totally left long document support go. Maybe that's because the return on investment is not there.

As far as I know therein lies the only real advantage for Adobe products. I could discuss the Illustrator support for extremely poorly created design with node counts out of this universe but why they only output when rasterized. Corel certainly took a different route with transparency but that's an advantage as it outputs more reliably on high end systems.

Corel's issues as far as their software is much the same as any other company, bugs, update shortcomings, that goes without saying. Adobe has the same issues so why discuss this they are simply matter of fact in this world.

MAC has had no real innovations since they became PC's, the OS has had little to no change which is demonstrated well by how many old MACs you see at print shops. I would talk about the MAC but what is there to talk about.

Corel of course is not widely used in Printing press graphics, is not taught in the education community as much, the user base is about 2.7 million, mainly in diverse companies, that do some print, some signs, some wide and grand format, some dye sublimation, embroidery cut glass and laser engraving. So it's a wild card.

The disadvantage is to the up and coming graphics creation generation, they are not learning to think differently. The MAC/Adobe workflow has in general remained the same since the 80's. Use a page layout application, create an image place it and link it, create a drawing, place it and link it.

Now that would be fine if we could look at the graphics industry as a whole and see a healthy industry, now we all know better than that! Do we want another 30 years like the past 30 years?

So where are we at, the Adobe workflow is as it was, we get files with missing links, missing fonts, transparency issues, about like it was nearly 30 years ago but worse since the feature set is more complicated and now a costly cloud based rental program. I would talk about the Adobe workflow but there really is not much new.

Where is the new graphic designer at? Shorter runs, a multifaceted needs, TIGHTER MARGINS.

Do they need Adobe?

No. What do they need?

A color managed set of tools that comply with the GDI, (CUPS in MAC) and postscript. At a cost effective price, period.

Photoshop alternatives, GIMP, PhotoLine, Corel Photo-PAINT, N color support, LAB, RGB and CMYK support all available in Corel only I believe.

Illustrator alternatives, CorelDraw, Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Xara. N color support, LAB, RGB and CMYK support all available in Corel only I believe.

InDesign alternatives, depends on your needs, up to 40pages CorelDraw does fine after that I have no suggestions.

So what to do? That depends on what you do! Except that you need compliance with the ICC, the GDI and postscript, ONLY! The rest is up to your skill set.

There are so few companies writing software for the MAC so there is little to talk about, the exact opposite for the PC and the only real growth in graphic output is on the PC side.

PC advantages, low cost of ownership, quick replacement high output, global support. PC cons MAC compatibility.

MAC advantages, MAC compatibility. MAC cons, MAC compatibility only.

ICC compliance as well as the GDI and postscript is a given as is N color support no one else should play.

Adobe Pros and cons, long document support, support across the print industry, poor support in other areas of graphics needs, high cost of ownership.

CorelDraw pros and cons, less support in the press industry, less support for long documents. Pros are 150' x 150' documents no need to work in scale complete compatibility in all graphics areas except long documents, IMO the real advantage is the interface, with the default workspace I can preflight objects in a file by clicking on it, no need for dockers and programmability of the application, LOW COST. Files and fonts are color managed in 3 color models, files and fonts are embedded, if a font can't be embedded a warning shows up, no missing links, fonts, publish to PDF supporting all 3 color models.

I'll talk Adobe and MAC when they do something worth talking about.

 

[Chasfinch]

It comes down to how the OS is written and how the Hardware interacts. OSX is Generally more stable and useable. hell I have been wanting to do a HACKINTOSH on a laptop for years. Drivers now are close enough to make it worth wild. If you love Windows more power to you. I dont mind a windows box and there are certain features that I wish would go into OSX. But that being said. Again old windows boxs are more unstable as workstations and from my experience have more software issues then the OSX counterpart- even though the OSX is by far used more in shear data.

Have a great day.

Now back on to photoshop alternatives, I've updated to PaintShop Pro X9, now to be clear the almost exclusive reason I use PS is to RIP lousy Adobe PDF files to a Raster and it appears the PaintShop Pro X9 may work out. Doing so from Acrobat is way too slow. I need more testing.

I'm currently Corel Photo-PAINT X8 for all CMYK, LAB and N color image work. All high color editing is finalized there. I've been handling RAW conversions with Aftershot Pro 3, RGB image with Paintshop Pro (especially phone camera images due to the nice feature set) and Photo-PAINT X8 for high end output.

 

[Slammer]

AP90, there are issues with all software, the cons of CorelDraw certainly but more so Corel corporation is that they have totally left long document support go. Maybe that's because the return on investment is not there.

Agree with you in a lot of your points, never used Corel though, for me Photoshop has been replaced with Photoaffinity, Illustrator with Designer and Indesign with my old friend QuarkXpress.
I have a lot of customers here struggling to keep abreast with Adobe and not realizing that the few printjobs that they have left can be done on much cheaper equipment.

 

[David Milisock]

Slammer the new designer coming into the graphics industry need to learn to think. Learn how the evaluate their software, many graphic companies are now marketing design as part of their services. This fact totally eliminates the need for Adobe.

I tried Corel PaintShop Pro 9 for rasterizing several large InDesign created PDF files for vehicles and trade show. Now nearly all these files had problems that the designers were unwilling and or incapable of fixing and unwilling to pay for the fix. Mixed color models transparency issues the gamut of textbook MAC/Adobe designer issues, I was amazed how quickly PSP rasterized them, some 100" x 50" panels. Cost $79 and I can put it on 3 systems.

When a new graphics users asks about a graphics program, is this school that school any good I reply with this. Ask the professor what are the three governing technologies that define the viability of a graphics application.

I tell them it's compliance with the GDI, ICC and postscript and that the education program must train them how to evaluate the software in this manner. If the professor does not know that do not enroll, if you are enrolled ask for a refund.

 

[David Milisock]

It comes down to how the OS is written and how the Hardware interacts. OSX is Generally more stable and useable. hell I have been wanting to do a HACKINTOSH on a laptop for years. Drivers now are close enough to make it worth wild. If you love Windows more power to you. I dont mind a windows box and there are certain features that I wish would go into OSX. But that being said. Again old windows boxs are more unstable as workstations and from my experience have more software issues then the OSX counterpart- even though the OSX is by far used more in shear data.

Have a great day.

Of course old Windows boxes are less stable, but unless you have hardware and software specific needs it's foolish to use one.

I went from Windows 3.1 to quad processor NT4 systems, placed several XP systems after Sp2 placed 1 Vista system on line as a test, had multiple Windows 7 systems. I have replace all but 2 Windows 7 systems with Windows 10. The increased productivity at every step was recovered in costs very quickly, the Windows 10 update was only labor costs except for the cost of my personal work station that was a new build.

You see a few things, in print shops many times you see old MACs some say it's because they run so well, however when you get to talking to the management many times you'll find they can't afford to replace them. A lack of backward compatibility and an adherence to the old Adobe structure have financially damaged the companies ability to be versatile and profitable. I still see CS5 everywhere in the graphics industry.

We had a similar issue, an old RIP needs OSX 4, to upgrade the MAC meant $1,500 for a new RIP and software that barely made us any money. After awhile we just threw all of it out.

I understand that a business has a client base that's all MAC so it makes sense to have MACs, but from a technical standpoint if you have moderate technical skills since 1996 that's about the only reason to have a MAC.

With the evolution in todays software market the reason's to use Adobe CC is evolving away even faster then the need for a MAC evolved into near extinction.

Be smart, learn your skills, make money, I don't care if you use crayons.

 

[Slammer]

Be smart, learn your skills, make money, I don't care if you use crayons.

I bet there are dyed in the wool Adobe junkies here who are calling your name and getting their mob on whilst sharpening their pitchforks and lightning their torches. ;.)

 

[prepressdork]

Ahhhh yes, the familiar back and forth of Mac vs. PC. Ultimately, use what you're comfortable with and/or what gets the job done. Although I worked in a mixed environment, I started using Mac in 1988 and prefer it over Windows. This doesn't mean that Mac is better or worse than Windows, it's just what I prefer. Saying why one is better than the other is basically pointless as is the argument of InDesign vs. QuarkXPress. We're all here to support our customers so for many of us, we must use the apps that our customers use...period.

Cheers,
pd

 

[David Milisock]

prepressdork, >we must use the apps that our customers use...period
Actually we don't any more for a large part of the work being processed because 90% is low cost GIGO and the end user wouldn't know quality if it bit them in the butt. That's why so many wide format printers just RIP the PDF to raster and why I'm using PSP X9 does the job in RBB work flows at high quality, fast and cheap.

 

[David Milisock]

I bet there are dyed in the wool Adobe junkies here who are calling your name and getting their mob on whilst sharpening their pitchforks and lightning their torches. ;.)

Good the pressure release will extend their life. So I consider the service part of the Affordable Health Care Act.

On the other hand I have one AI CC 2016 user where she and I are constantly ragging each other about Illustrator and CorelDraw. She learned Illustrator in school, has lots of files and doesn't want to change. The bickering back and forth is a source of entertainment for us in a stressful environment. Does it cost her more because she uses Illustrator? Yes and she knows it and is willing to pay so I don't care.

What kind of stress are we talking about? Well turning a $50,000 donor wall project that is scheduled for 6 weeks in 4, with some artistic changes in the last two weeks all in time for a grand opening ceremony that costs $15,000 itself can cause a moments loss of sleep.

 

[prepressdork]

prepressdork, >we must use the apps that our customers use...period
Actually we don't any more for a large part of the work being processed because 90% is low cost GIGO and the end user wouldn't know quality if it bit them in the butt. That's why so many wide format printers just RIP the PDF to raster and why I'm using PSP X9 does the job in RBB work flows at high quality, fast and cheap.

Ah ok. That's where we differ. While I do have some customers who think color should look like what they see on their monitors in Microsoft Publisher and will concede that wide format jobs might allow some latitude in what is defined as quality, I print offset for the vast majority of my clients and they expect quality, so part of my quality assurance policy is that we use the apps/versions our customers use. This helps ensure that what we output matches what they intended. Yes, this may cost more but in the end, it helps equate to a happy customer.

pd

 

[David Milisock]

prepressdork, >I print offset for the vast majority of my clients and they expect quality

I used to do exclusively offset work but removed myself from it as much as possible since the profit margins went to the crapper. I do only about 10% of my work on press now and only the high end work supports my expected profit margins.

With that said the files sent to me by most designers are so awful that when quality is a must I most often just rebuild all the files. An example would be a recent 5/5 (CMYK with a spot varnish) - 16 page booklet. The file was so poorly built and the images so bad I decided to color correct all the images in Corel Photo-PAINT X8 and rebuild the file in CorelDraw X8.

I returned all the images to the client once corrected and they have used them on their in house digital print engine, which BTW is a top of the line Canon, the results according to them were fantastic. I know the final press prints looked reasonable in my opinion and very similar to their digital printer.

I used a program that for a small 16 page document was vastly faster to produce the end result, so I did not need their program just their files. Quality has little to do with using your clients operating system or their applications.

While wide format printing does provide some latitude on many jobs the quality required for some are beyond what can be done on a press, the client expects corporate identity to be reproduced to standards and expanded gamut on image elements. A much tougher game then simple CMYK press gamut. I started doing this in 2008 with CorelDraw X3 as it was and still is the best at color managed native color PDF output.

 

[prepressdork]

David, we can agree to disagree. You do what works for you and I will do what works for me

Best regards,
pd

 

[David Milisock]

David, we can agree to disagree. You do what works for you and I will do what works for me

Best regards,
pd

Sure we can agree to disagree but what do we tell the best and brightest coming into the industry? 25 years ago the day I started my shop, there were 141 printers in my area, now there are 11.

With that stellar performance I believe that the definition of insanity, (doing things the same way and expecting a different result) is clearly demonstrated by the print business.

 

[David Milisock]

Here's an example from a Ps ALTERNATIVE

 

[David Milisock]

Here's another example this time my work, I don't go for the hard corrections the one above does leave the subjects character but is not my cup of tea. I do these type of corrections.