Looking to buy a LEGAL instance of Adobe CS5 or CS6,

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I hope that this is OK to post a “want to buy” something thread…

I’ve been using Inkscape so far, and while fairly happy with it, the I do find it a bit non-sensical and have been having some stability issues.

Well, I decided to step up to Adobe Illustrator (and potentially the rest of the Suite), and unfortunately decided to do so JUST AFTER the big Creative Cloud discount that Adobe just ended on March 1st. $52.99 / month is a bit more than I want to spend, so I thought I’d look for perpetual licenses for CS5 or CS6.

Looking at eBay and other sources, it’s pretty clear that nearly everything there is bootlegged (or at least very questionable, so that’s pretty much a no-go for me.

Based on my research, it appears that standard (non educational) licenses are legally transferrable, if you follow Adobe’s full policy, which includes both the original licensee and the party (me) filling out the paperwork (and having it accepted).

Because this is (at least at this time) just a hobby / a bit of a side business for me (my corporate job keeps me very busy), I thought I would ask this group to see if anyone has moved to Creative Cloud and has a fully legal instance CS5 or CS6 (discs, key, etc.) that they would like to sell (with the condition of handling all of the proper transfer paperwork as part of the sale).

(I can use either Mac or Windows versions, based on my current setup, but am leaning to Mac, if that makes any difference.)

If you have one you would be interested in selling, let me know via PM.

If anyone has other suggestions on where to find a LEGAL copy, please reply to the post.

(and if this is not appropriate, please let me know and / or just kill the thread.)

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Before you proceed too far along the path, you should check that those versions will run on the operating systems you are using. I’m running CS5 on my Mac under El Capitan, and it’s just barely limping along. I’m pretty sure if I upgrade my operating system I’ll no longer be able to use this old version.

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Thanks for that advice. When you say “limping along,” what are some of the issues you are running into?

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Random crashes; it thinks it crashed every time I close normally (offering to reopen, etc), font menu messed up (that turned out to have a solution by checking the right box in system prefs), occasional wonky behavior that requires a reboot. This is not all the time—for the most part I’m able to get what I want done, but it does not auger well for future upgrades of the OS.

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Which version of the OS are you on?

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El Capitan

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Really disappointed I missed the sale… I would have done $39 / month. I tried calling and was told “Nope”

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They do the same deal for Black Friday if you can wait that long.

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The irony is that I will wait that long, or find another soluition (e.g. - keep using Inkscape or find a reasonably priced CS6 version.)

I probably could have easily decidced to purchase a likely cracked or bootleg copy, or worked around one of the Student / teacher licenses, but I was looking for a way to give Adobe a subscription.

Had I gotten someone at their call center who was doing more than just reading a script (although they DID bask Inkscape when I described what I was doing), they would be getting $40 / month for me. Even if I choose to go the Black Friday route, they are losing ~ $360 in revenue (at nearly zero incremental cost) that they would have been happy to take 3 days earlier.

Oh well, that it literally their loss. :wink:

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Oh, and one other thing: that $40/month deal is just for a year, you can’t renew it at that price even if they are running the deal again. So you’re back up to $53/month at that time. Just something to be aware of.

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Understood. But at the end of one year, i’ll Have a better idea if I can justify the full priced subscription, or if I switch to just an illustrator only version at $20/ month.

I really wish they had a “light use” subscription between Student and Individual.

Oh well, hope is not a strategy…

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While you wait for another Adobe sale, you might try out Affinity Designer to see if it works for you. It doesn’t have the larger support communities Inkscape and Illustrator have, but it’s reasonably priced and has a lot going for it. I am not a big fan of subscription-based software so I’m always on the hunt for alternatives.

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I was just going to mention Affinity, as well…to echo what Christy is saying. Some of the ratings put it right up there as a contender with AI. I’ve only started learning it in this past year, so really am pretty new to it, too…and, one thing I know is it doesn’t yet have is auto trace, which I would love. I wrote to Serif and asked about it and they said they are working on being able to offer it in the future. It’s available for both Windows and Mac and I’m pretty sure you can download a demo. I recommend it highly.

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There are a few things I can do easily in Inkscape that I haven’t figured out how to do in Affinity Designer (don’t ask what they are as I’m blanking at the moment), some things (like font selection) are just so much smoother and user friendly in AD. I actually often switch back and forth between the packages. I’m hoping A.D. eventually adds some key missing features because I’d happily make the switch. Also, I love having the preset shapes.

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I mostly use Affinity Designer. There are a lot of features that are missing, but it usually gets the job done. The biggest problem I run into is that a lot of the path manipulation tools generate paths that use the even-odd fill rule but the Glowforge doesn’t handle those correctly (it renders them using the nonzero fill rule). But in the betas of 1.7 it’s easier to deal with that (by manually reversing the directions of paths as needed) although I think 99% of people would never figure out how to deal with that because fill rules are a rather esoteric aspect of computer graphics. (The real solution is for Glowforge to fix their software to handle both fill rules properly but they don’t seem to have any interest in doing so.)

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Editing lines is better in Inkscape – if you want to change how shapes intersect, or break a line and join it to a different path, etc.

I have recently been loving the fact that when exporting to SVG, AD will convert your fonts to curves for you. That saves me a lot of time! :slight_smile:

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I believe there’s a setting now in Inkscape to do that (Corel does it by default too).

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Thanks everyone for the advice and suggestions. I’ve downloaded the Affinity designer trial for Windows and for Mac, and hope to spend a bit of time with it this weekend.

Has anyone used the iPad version? I think that might also be worth investigating, especially for the $20 price, and being able to work with my iPad Pro.

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I have the iPad version but have only barely used it. If I’m anywhere near my Mac I prefer to use that. But I’m going on a trip in a few weeks where I won’t have anything but my iPad with me so I plan to spend some time learning to use AD on the iPad.

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I also have the iPad version for my pro and have spent very limited time trying to use it. I mainly use my iMac because of the large screen footprint…much easier for these elderly eyes. :wink: I do hope to try it out more in the future, though.

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