DL Signs
WildWestDesigns
If you do flash, animation, etc, yeah, Adobe is kind of a must. If you're a photographer, it's still the boss. It comes down to what you need.
Well, I'm more of a frame by frame animation guy, that isn't Flash's strong point, or advertised strong point.
But that actually wasn't the point. I haven't used Adobe at all within the last 8 yrs now, I'm not even on the Windows or Mac platform (I've totally flown that coop), so using Adobe is moot at this point as well, at least as far as bare metal goes.
It is more about how tightly integrated they are. While I do not believe that as many people
need Adobe as those that claim to, the one thing that cannot be taken from Adobe, is how integrated their system is. It's actually the best at that very thing.
I work for a sign company and freelance in the ad world, I design for print, I print, I cut... I send files to printers of newspapers & magazines created in Affinity with no problems. The majority of what I do at the shop, I create artwork and print in-house with no issues. Customer provided files I don't really have many problems with. What I cut has to pass through Illustrator because, well, Mimaki. You'd think some of these manufacturers would have gotten better at this in the last 30 years.
Nor do I. While I do have customer supplied files, most of which are PDFs, those few that I do have as a master file, what I need to do, I don't have to have them in their pure vector form as it is. So that need for me is not there.
And you're right, it would be great to have a universal format. No software company will ever get 100% of the users in the industry anyway. Most general design work uses the basic tools, text, shapes, color. For signs, banners, logo design, general graphics, vehicle graphics and wraps, a vector is a vector, no matter how you slice it, or what program you use to create it, the proprietary extensions make or break their range of use. The biggest issue is no CDR file support, but we require customers to provide PDF, EPS, or Ai, so I rarely encounter them anyway. I've been using Affinity for a couple years and have had very few issues with Adobe file formats, even designs provided by national accounts that always seem to make the simplest designs waaayyy more complicated than they need to be. Photo integration/ manipulation into designs is just as easy as Adobe, and I've run into the need to save & reopen mix vector/ pixel designs between AI & PS to edit the two independently, Affinity all but eliminated that. I've been pretty impressed. They're on a good path.
The apparel industry does seem them far more if you don't require stipulations to file format. I think most people should require stipulations to file formats if they want to make sure that they see certain file formats or certain versions of those file formats.
In most instances, things really are done very simply even from people that usually dictate Adobe format. Although I do really hate the amount of clipping masks there are.
Affinity does allow you to use your license on more than one device you own, it doesn't expire, and unlike Adobe you can run them simultaneously, not "one device at a time" if you're using a single license. So it's about as close to ownership as it gets.
That is a common misconception, they do expire. Not typically in the direct method that most people thing of, but they do. Unless you are willing to run either physical boxes of older OSs or VMs of the older OS that can support running that program, they will expire at some point. There are breaking changes that do happen at the OS level that make it hard for installation of those programs later on and if they aren't supported on th new OSs (Affinity doesn't have a point release to add in that newer OS support), have to do something else to keep that around.
Be careful here (not necessarily for you specifically, but "you" in general), there are actually exceptions to here if this is a commercial business that has others using the same computer etc (and of course, the usual education exception as well). Even if it's a Windows computer (I wonder why they specifically said Windows when this is somewhat cross platform (I say somewhat because it is only available on 2/3s of the desktop platforms, at least major ones, there are a lot of minor ones out there)) that "you" own, it must only be used by "you", if you intend to use it in commercial purposes. How they can police that, I don't know but it is in their EULA just the same. Even if you are the only one that owns and uses the computer for commercial purposes, if others use it, even for private use, they have to have their own license (if they use an Affinity product on said computer, but if one has others on there just in general, probably going to spark something).
Of course, if there is any method of online validation of legit purpose, that is another area in which something can "expire" as well. Even if it isn't the same type of activation that Adobe and Corel do, if it is a server that they can retire, because they no longer support the product, that is a risk there. Now, if it's offline activation, that's something else. But if it goes online for any validation purposes, that is another risk.
Actually one can get closer to ownership, just not with programs that follow this type of development model (but I'm trying not to digress into that topic).
If you look in this thread at the MC vector I attached, It was done with Affinity Designer using nothing but vector shapes, masks, and gaussian blur. That's it. No gradients, no pixel elements. I do illustrations like that just for fun. Maybe I've just been doing this too long, but I've never used half of what Adobe, or even Affinity has, and I can do that in pretty much any vector software. I don't use tracing programs, I create/ recreate elements and effects without having to buy or download them, and never seem to need half of the tools and options, I try to not "over complicate" the design process like many do. Complex designs done as simple as possible.
When I was teaching people embroidery digitizing to others, I always did it either in a manual or semi manual way. More likely, those tools existed in a variety of programs, may have different hot keys, may have different names, but the functionality is the same. This enabled the ability to go from one program to the next pretty seamlessly if needed to switch programs for whatever reason (that isn't even going over the general better quality of output if one knows what they are doing). This also enabled me to move away from a commercial program that costs $15k to an open source program that costs $0. And I didn't skip a beat within that transition, because I was already used to a more cross platform workflow. But if one is beholding to a very specific workflow that was tightly interwoven with any one particular product, no bueno for them. Just like when I use vector programs, it's the bezier pen tool and pathfinding tools. Something that is common to most vector programs out there. Same thing with sketching/drawing programs as well.
Your preaching to the choir, I have debated this very topic (and I actually have taken it further down the rabbit hole in some aspects) on here over the years. I don't disagree with your premise of not needing Adobe (I haven't used Adobe myself for almost 10 yrs, not even in a VM), but suite integration still at this time, goes to them. I use programs that aren't as tightly integrated, that has gotten better, but it is still lacking, just because they are all under separate projects (not from one company) and it is a hassle, but once that workflow is learned, it handles OK, but not at the same level of Adobe.
But keep in mind, not only do I believe that not many people out there really
need Adobe that think that they do, but also I believe that other software has some, not all, but I think they don't lack as much functionality as most would think, of the functionality that people think are missing from Adobe, just implemented in a different way that has to be relearned. Now want to argue the UX of that, that's one thing, but some of them say that due to the UX that the feature may as well not exists, not quite the same thing. Typically the problem there is that they are so coupled with a specific software workflow, but I digress (which I do most of the time).
I know I have gotten long winded, so after all of that, I just wanted to say, I'm all for people switching to something else outside of the usual 2 programs. Don't get me wrong. My experience, such as it is, is only with Photo as far as Affinity goes, but I can't complain about it at all. I think more competition helps the others innovate (and I don't consider just buying other software innovation), so more the merrier.
