Alternative Software

[Starloz]

I currently use illustrator/photoshop etc, but when I get my laptop, i'll not be able to install them, if you know what i mean ...i'll have a lot of saving to do. I'm looking at alternatives and open-source has sparked an interest. I've researched people using open-source for commercial use, and although there are too many, some do use inkscape and gimp exclusively, and i couldn't tell what software was used based on the final output. Are there any other alternative options to adobe that one could use temporarily, paid or free open-source?

 

[Paul Murray]

Adobe have a monthly subscription option available for the programs: http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html

With regards to using open source alternatives, it's completely viable if you know how to use them. The Adobe packages are the industry standard though, and whilst you can get the same final outcome with the free/cheap alternatives, you could run into problems if someone sends you, or asks you to send them, the final work in a format that doesn't open correctly on yours or their respective programs.

Saying that though, some of the Adobe CS programs aren't backwards compatible anyway, so you can't open a CS5 InDesign document in CS4 without exporting it to another format first, (which doesn't always work properly anyway), so I guess you could still run into that problem using the Adobe suite.