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Graphic Design Software - The Battle

Adobe has nearly eliminated their competitors in most graphic design areas. In desktop publishing their main competitor to InDesign is Quark XPress (used to be very strong). In website design they have no competition at all, Microsoft Front Page does not mean anything now comparing to Dreamweaver. In illustration their Illustrator fights with Corel Draw, however most people are more comfortable in using Illustrator and that is why Corel looses its position. In photography there is only one king - Photoshop.

Are they any alternatives to Adobe programs? What is going to happen if Adobe becomes the most common graphic design software? By having no competition, can it maintain identical quality and drive for excellence? And what is going to happen to the price? Will it stay at the same level or simply continue upward. If you are the only one pizza shop in town, does it mean you can charge whatever you want for your double pepperoni?

Tags: adobe, design, graphic, program, software

Views: 209

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kerby Rosanes on July 12, 2012 at 7:38am

Interesting points Robert. I've been a user of Adobe products for a long time now and pretty satisfied with all their updates so far.

Competition is always part of the game. The good thing about Adobe products is that they've already acquired the trust from the majority of users in terms of quality and efficiency. And loosing this trust should not happen so they continue to move upward by updating their products and adding more advanced features.

I also think that the best competition is competing with yourself. Every time you update, the changes must always be better than your old self. I think this is the same concept as with Adobe, they are going upward and competing not just with other companies but also with the current versions of their own products.

Permalink Reply by Robert K on July 16, 2012 at 8:46pm

I agree with you Kerby, Adobe's products are pretty well and easy to use by designers. What else would you need? However, don't you think the prices for Adobe products are too high? If there is competition on the market, prices could be increased for the same product and that's a monopoly to me.

Permalink Reply by Misha Burns on July 25, 2012 at 1:25pm

Hmm, I think that Adobe's pricing is fairly reasonable for the professionals. But for the amateurs and students, it would be a letdown, despite the features. In case of Photoshop, I think GIMP is the closest open-source alternative.

Permalink Reply by Robert K on July 26, 2012 at 8:31pm

GIMP is a great photo editing program which is simple and it's free. I agree, however there is not that mauch functionality and effects comparing to PS. Thanks Misha

Permalink Reply by Douglas Cullen on July 24, 2012 at 10:22am

As long as the price is relatively worth it to the features, I believe customers will still patronize Adobe products in the future regardless of price increase.

Permalink Reply by Dean Neitman on July 26, 2012 at 3:02am

So am I the only who can't read this original post in its entirety?

Permalink Reply by Misha Burns on July 26, 2012 at 6:04pm

Nope, you are not the only one. Either he made a mistake in posting or there may be some issues with the posting system. But he did manage to open the discussion.

Permalink Reply by Robert K on July 26, 2012 at 8:33pm

I fixed it now, thanks for letting me know. I simply copied/pasted the text from Word, but this time I used the "Paste as plain text" option when posting. Thanks Dean.

Permalink Reply by Misha Burns on July 27, 2012 at 5:17pm

Now that's better. Regarding your other points, I think that even if it becomes the dominant player in the market, Adobe won't be slacking off in developing its products.

Permalink Reply by Hank Scorpio on March 25, 2013 at 8:24pm

There are lots of free software that is available and do almost identical but not quite as good asAdobe programs. These are freeware and open source.

I saw someone mentioned Gimp as an Alternative to Photoshop. Where it is true that GIMP is pretty good for a lot of things that Photoshop can do - it's probably more suited to Web stuff. As for preparing images for printing, GIMP doesn't have ICC Profile, Colour Management or a CMYK model for professional printing or Pantone Colours.

Inkscape is a free alternative similar to Illustrator. But it doesn't support true CMYK profiles either and it certainly doesn't support Pantone colours or allow Spot colours - which would be needed for Professional Printing. But as a Vector program for creating vector artwork it's fine - although it doesn't support sRGB.

Scribus is an alternative to InDesign/Quark - but again the same problems arise in the lacking of ICC Profiles, CMYK and Pantone Spot colours. It can do a lot of Page Layout things like InDesign or Quark - and I know a few people who use it for printing purposes. Although I wouldn't recommend it for really important projects, or with work for a client.

Here's a rundown of some Open Source Alternatives

Photoshop/Photoshop Elements
GIMP (Windows, Mac, Unix)
Edit bitmap images and photos. It saves files in popular formats including Photoshop (jpeg, tiff, gif.. Client for Windows called GIMPshop, which "skins" the interface to emulate Photoshop.

Illustrator/Corel
Inkscape (Windows, Mac, Linux)
This program creates scalable vector artwork. It can import and export SVG, Illustrator (.ai), PDF files, and also handle many common raster format files (jpeg, png, gif..).

InDesign/Quark Xpress
Scribus (Windows, Mac, Linux)
This open source program is designed for desktop publishing. This program supports PDF/X-3 standards and comes with a limited amount of vector tools. It supports SVG importing and Open Type fonts.

PLEASE NOTE: If you intend to design for print - please check with Printing Companies beforehand if they accept files created from these applications. These are not the Industry Standard programs and the file formats/structure may cause havoc with their very expensive equipment (like RIPs, platesetters etc.)

Flash
Synfig (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Synfig is more complicated than Flash, espcially if you're a novice user. It can export to a variety of video formats, including Flash (.swf), mpeg, and SVG. Supports ActionScript.

Director
libavg (Mac, Ubuntu)
Develop rich-media interfaces for presentations etc. Can be confusing and not at all like Adobe Director Interface

Dreamweaver
Nvu (Windows, Mac, Linux)
WYSIWYG design view, similar to Dreamweaver.

And a clean source view for coding by hand.

Soundbooth
Audacity (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Very light version of Soundbooth. Most audio file formats (wav, mp3, aiff, ogg vorbis).

Premiere
Avidemux (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Input from MPEG, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, images, H.263 format, and more.

Output to AVI, MPEG, MP4, or OMG.

Not as powerful as Premiere but can do the trick.

Encore
DVDStyler (Windows, Linux)
Encore can't be bought as a stand-alone program  since it was integrated as part of Premiere in CS3.

Create menus for DVDs.

Premier is better and Encore is better, but DVD styler works great.

After Effects
Jahshaja (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Import projects from Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Lightwave, Maya, 3DS Max, and more.

Plenty of format export options.

Do note though that these programs are not widely accepted by professional printing/video/web/etc. companies and always check with them prior to starting as to what is best for them to work with. Else you may incur extra charges.

Permalink Reply by James darwin on April 6, 2013 at 2:34pm

Good points, people will definitely agree with your views they are very appreciable.

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