Adobe Competitors?

[7on]

It seems to me that Adobe has a complete monopoly in their area. Frankly that has me a little upset, especially with the UI changes in CS4. Sounds like they are making changes just to be making changes.

Now as a proud Macbook owner still working the CS1 in all its Rosetta glory, would there be any good contenders as an all out Adobe replacement? I've played around with Pixelmator and Vector Designer, the former lacking a bezier curve (pen tool) was just barbaric and the fact that the VD folks wanted $70 for that mess of an App was shocking. However, I also fear that these two apps are the only main competition for Adobe and big A's apps are seeming to become lackluster. Sigh... That and I'd rather not spend that ghastly amount for Adobe again At least not until I start freelancing from home. I'm interested in something with edge, much like Pixelmator. In fact, once a pen tool and path editing gets added I may break down and purchase that piece of software. But then I'm left filling a large Vector void. Probably best to stick to Illustrator in that case... but still it's unnerving that lack of competition especially with the purchase of Macromedia not too long ago.

Sorry about the rant, just felt it was necessary.

Oh, and happy Independence Day!

 

[indiochano]

It seems to me that Adobe has a complete monopoly in their area. Frankly that has me a little upset, especially with the UI changes in CS4. Sounds like they are making changes just to be making changes.

Now as a proud Macbook owner still working the CS1 in all its Rosetta glory, would there be any good contenders as an all out Adobe replacement? I've played around with Pixelmator and Vector Designer, the former lacking a bezier curve (pen tool) was just barbaric and the fact that the VD folks wanted $70 for that mess of an App was shocking. However, I also fear that these two apps are the only main competition for Adobe and big A's apps are seeming to become lackluster. Sigh... That and I'd rather not spend that ghastly amount for Adobe again At least not until I start freelancing from home. I'm interested in something with edge, much like Pixelmator. In fact, once a pen tool and path editing gets added I may break down and purchase that piece of software. But then I'm left filling a large Vector void. Probably best to stick to Illustrator in that case... but still it's unnerving that lack of competition especially with the purchase of Macromedia not too long ago.

Sorry about the rant, just felt it was necessary.

Oh, and happy Independence Day!

yes, it does seem that adobe at the moment has an absolute monopoly in digital graphics creation. the last REAL competitor adobe had was of course macromedia which ironically was bought by adobe...

this is why their latest releases haven't been all that great... their lack of competition keeps them off their worries and they seem to be dealing with minor details that no one really care about.

i hope they release a 64 bit version of ps cs4... but it seems like the os x version will remain 32 bit.

 

[stainlessliquid]

Thy only have 2 competitors: Corel Painter for painting, Quark Xpress for layout.

 

[7on]

Thy only have 2 competitors: Corel Painter for painting, Quark Xpress for layout.

But one could say that Adobe doesn't have any painting apps. But Corel does have their Draw art suite. But even that is Windows only.

 

[nater.]

Don't forget about Microsoft too...

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

Kinda funny really...

 

[nyutnyut]

i hope the unified look of CS4 will be a good thing. there's too many differences between how each application handles similar functions, which is quite annoying.

macromedia being no more is depressing to me, cause i hate illustrator, and always thought freehand was a far superior program.

 

[SwiftLives]

Don't get me wrong...I'm not a fan of Quark. One could say I'm still a bit bitter about the days when they would blatantly treat their customers with a fair amount of contempt for so much as talking to them. I'm also quite possibly bitter about the days when 2-3 years would go by without any sort of upgrade. I don't use Quark anymore. I'm strictly an Adobe shop.

That being said, I don't want Quark to go away. In fact, I was secretly hoping Quark might end up with Freehand and attempt to come out with a pixel-based image editor as well (again).

Adobe needs the competition. Without it, Adobe's releases are going to get crappier and crappier and we're going to see a huge dropoff in quality of future releases. Think - lots and lots of annoying little bugs indicative of a program being rushed out the door to meet an arbitrary 18 month timeframe.

Personally, I think Quark's best bet at this point - and I think they're headed in this direction - is to release one program capable of strong layout, vector, and photo editing. (As it stands now, Quark is capable of the three, but on a much more basic level). This would be a strategic end-run around Adobe Creative Suite and would give Quark a viable chance to compete with them on price in the layout and publishing market.

If that were to happen, it would be a few years down the road. And we can only hope Quark lasts that long.