The Cult of Creative Cloud.

Adobe has always been the premium choice in the creative media space. They make great products. I have used Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, InDesign, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, and Audition. Probably others.

Photoshop, Premier, Lightroom, and Audition were the most used in my workflow.

I refer to these programs in the past tense because I am currently not using them. Why? I'm trying to quit. I've been CC free for almost a month now.

I hate the cloud. It exchanges old annoyances with new ones. And extracts a monthly cost for them. Although the old CS bundle was costly, I was not reminded every month! I understand the cost thing. I really do. It is the best way for Adobe to stay profitable. But it hurts my monthly budget enough to notice. And the cloud validation fails just often enough to be a regular workflow interruption. Inspiration can be fleeting. And when you have to wait for Photoshop to load, it can be difficult to hang on to. And when you have to stop everything to sign back into your Adobe account, it can die completely.

Adobe gets in the way.

Alternatives? Yes. Better? Probably not technically. But in terms of getting out of my way? Yes.

I'll highlight the alternatives that I have been using over the next few posts. But here is the short list.

Photoshop --> GIMP
Lightroom --> Darktable
Premier Pro --> Lightworks
Audition --> Audacity
After Effects --> Natron
InDesign --> Scribus
Acrobat --> Pdf Editor

Admittedly a couple of these have to try hard to keep up with the Adobe version. It's really too bad that it has come to the point that it is easier to deal with clunky interfaces and suboptimal programs than to waste time in the cloud. I am not very familiar with a few of these. Some are old standbys. I'll review the familiar ones first and as I become more familiar, highlight the newer ones.

Canon 7D
Tamron  28-200mm@39mm
Post: 
Darktable 
GIMP
Alienskin Exposure X