Comments on: Media Production on a Budget: Adobe Creative Suite Alternatives

By: Seven simple steps to better design, sans designer | TRIGGERS & SPARKS

Seven simple steps to better design, sans designer | TRIGGERS & SPARKS — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:50:33 +0000

[...] Above and beyond any of its varied other failings, it is very difficult to make anything look nice in Word. Use OpenOffice if you really like word processors, or the range of (also variably flawed) Adobe products created for professionals, or their equally powerful freeware alternatives. [...]

By: cloud.tv

cloud.tv — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:46:14 +0000

For Flash you could always use the free Flex SDK and Eclipse. You won’t have the timeline for animation, but you can still compile Actionscript.

By: Mink Tea

Mink Tea — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:35:11 +0000

Ok, this might sound a bit ghetto, but for awhile we we’re stuck without After Effects or Motion in our offices… so we used Keynote.

It sounds ridiculous, and I won’t deny that it isn’t. But in pinch it’s workable.

Currently one of our remote content unit workflows consists of a Macbook, with Final Cut Express and Keynote for the lower thirds, segment titling and such… just export a Animation with the Alpha on and it’s surprisingly quite useable. And cheap!

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:07:14 +0000

@Rob – as mentioned in the article (and comments) the alternatives mentioned for Photoshop tend to blend the lines between PS and Fireworks. There were no outright options for just Fireworks, that I was able to find.

@CVBruce – Thanks for taking that one. PDF Pen and OS X’s Preview are both pretty fair Acrobat alternatives.

By: CVBruce

CVBruce — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:53:06 +0000

Good point Mathew. I’ve been using PDFpenPro from SmileOnMyMac. It does just about all of the things that I would do in Acrobat Pro. I might also add the Preview on Leopard has picked up so much functionality that many times Acrobat is unneeded.

CVBruce

By: Mathew Ewert

Mathew Ewert — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:47:52 +0000

You didn’t mention the one application that’s part of the Creative Suite that is the only truly important one for me: Adobe Acrobat. Together with the QuiteImposing plugin, in my case.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:51:55 +0000

Same question as David here – anyone know of a good alternative to Fireworks??

By: Chris Magee

Chris Magee — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:30:34 +0000

@VitaminCM: Just checked out Notepad++. Looks good, but does not do everything Coda does. Coda has built in FTP, a full power CSS editor, terminal and built in ebooks on HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP.

I use Coda constantly and love it — it was well worth the money spent, IMHO.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:32:06 +0000

Don’t forget alternatives for Lightroom -
iPhoto – you probably already have it, but is primitive especially for workflow and RAW management
Picasa – Free, about the same as iPhoto
Aperture – $$ but still lists for $100 less than Lightroom. Aperture gets you better integration with iLife and media on the mac in general and some prefer its workflow to Lightroom, although Apple is slower for RAW camera support updates than Adobe. I ended up with Lightroom as Aperture does not support my camera that was release in the middle of last.

The others, like Bibble, tend to be in the same general price range as Aperture/Lightroom.

By: VitaminCM

VitaminCM — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:28:45 +0000

I just switched over to a MacBook Pro about a month ago. For the most part I love it. My biggest gripe is the price of some applications that have a very limited utility. Coda? $99? It’s a text editor. Notepad++ has everything that Coda does and it’s open source.
Adobe always gets knocked for being expensive (rightly so), but I’d rather pay $150 for Photoshop Elements + Premiere Elements than $99 for a text editor.

By: Josh Pigford

Josh Pigford — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:40:11 +0000

@David: Nick mentioned in the third paragraph: “Also, for our purposes here, I’ve lumped Photoshop and Fireworks together, as the alternatives generally blur the lines between the two offerings.”

@Zachary: Nick did mention Espresso.

People, please read the article first before commenting. ;)

By: Zachary Abresch

Zachary Abresch — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:31:01 +0000

Don’t forget Espresso for code editing. If you are a MacHeist bundle buyer you got this app too.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:08:44 +0000

Inkscape is Windows as well…

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:57:17 +0000

Thanks for the suggestions. As for Flash I wish it would disappear from the face of the earth.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:53:06 +0000

Another budget alternative to InDesign on the Mac is “Swift Publisher” from BeLight Software. “The Print Shop” by Software MacKiev is also an option. And Stone Design’s “Create” is a Canvas-like product from the NeXT days that continues to be updated for Mac OS X.

By: snia

snia — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:51:24 +0000

don’t forget KompoZer (http://kompozer.net/) as a Dreamweaver alternative, currently newer and containing more features than it’s predecessor Nvu