Just got the notice of price increase / new features for my creative cloud subscription, and I think it’s time to part ways. For those of you that don’t use Adobe software, what’s your suite at the moment? I have creative cloud now, but I mainly use Illustrator, photoshop, and Lightroom Classic (which I do not love at all). Mac based if it makes a difference.
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Inkscape and gimp. Both free and both quite capable. Purists will disagree but to me it’s just bias toward familiarity.
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Appreciate that. I think beyond familiarity they’ve been around for a long time so there’s stability too.
I’ve been an Adobe customer since the nineteen-hundreds, sigh. I personally don’t find their new features useful or compelling, and the bloat has not slowed down, caused me a lot of trouble with running my laptop battery down and eating GPU up.
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Inkscape can drink legally in the US:
GIMP remembers when the first Toy Story movie was released.
So 22 and 30 years old, respectively. I would call that a long time.
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Affinity Designer for Mac. I learned to use it while waiting for my Glowforge to arrive and am still using it to this day, 9? 10? years later. Some people have said that it gives AI a run for the money. I sure like it.
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Affinity was bought by Canva and has rolled Designer 2, Photo 2, and Publisher 2 into one FREE app now named simply Affinity!
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Almost every project of mine starts in Fusion and then gets passed around to other apps from there.
I use Inkscape a lot even though I have Affinity.
Vcarve has some cool tricks up its sleeve but it is windows only and $$ so unless you are doing CNC work that needs it never mind on that.
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I’ll echo Inkscape, plus there are hundreds of 
specific instructions on here 
I am not a fan of GIMP. For raster stuff I recommend GetPaint.net
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I want a local app. Is getpaint.net a SAAS thing?
Ok EDIT.
It’s not SAAS. Cool. It supports curves. (Super important to engrave prep imo) cool.
It’s windows only. Cool for me, not for @mnemosyne
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I have Corel Draw and Affinity Designer, and have used Adobe Illustrator. I switched from Corel Draw to Inkscape a few years ago and haven’t looked back. They all seem fairly equivalent to me, except that Inkscape is community developed and maintained vs. anything commercial where you can expect a rug pull at any moment.
My experience with switching has been that, if you know what to call the feature or tool you want to use, you can look up the specifics pretty easily.
Unfortunately, I am a pretty heavy Adobe Bridge and Photoshop user, mostly for photography. I am actively (but slowly) trying other solutions for those. I have used Gimp, but not recently. Last time I tried it, it was approximately equivalent to Photoshop ~2 versions previous.
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There are assorted “Adobe alternatives” graphics like this floating around, if you want a list of things to try:
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I use Inkscape mostly but have Adobe Illustrator (self taught Inkscape and comfortable with it=thought Illustrator might be better but haven’t put the time in to learn it well). I use Photoshop and Adobe Bridge like @evermorian for photo stuff for years when I was heavy into photography and really comfortable with it.
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I downloaded! Looks so good.
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Vcarve has a lot of features for sure. I had a trial version of that a long time ago.
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Thanks, that’s super helpful!
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Hmmm, that’s going to become an issue for me as I’m switching to Linux…
Sigh!
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I use Inkscape and clip studio paint. I liked krita for drawing, but clip studio is nice. I’ve been using it for years now and still haven’t used all the features. I bought the program, it’s a one-time license, which is what I preferred over PS and CorelDraw. They have a monthly option, but I’m not interested in that. They include minor software updates, they did have a couple major ones over the years that required a new license, but the cost wasn’t extreme.
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Maybe it works in wine?
Or maybe it’s time to revisit GIMP. It’s really good these days.
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This is a candidate for you next vector editor?
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Oh my goodness! That power supply. I get nervy around line voltage…..
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