Making music artwork. Alternatives to Adobe?

[whyterabbyt]

:clogs:

there's probably a limited audience would get that, but I do...

[vurt]

:clogs:

there's probably a limited audience would get that, but I do...

[donkey tugger]

:clogs:

there's probably a limited audience would get that, but I do...

Going to see th'armeh in Bratfort? Put tha clogs on.

[vurt]

i got one on the side of the head at an nma gig, bloody stage diving crusties in clogs ffs.
they are nay laughing matter!

[whyterabbyt]

Last time I saw them was probably about 20 years ago now, but even then watching all the pudgy balding 40-year olds trying to climb onto each other in pyramids was, erm, amusing...

[vurt]

probably about the same since i last saw them tbh, manc academy iirc?
recognised most of the crowd from various other gigs over the years too, very loyal fan base who seemingly never had work ever

[vurt]

also re thread, just use gimp.
it's free and if you're only doing odd bits of artwork here and there, you don't need some amazing package these guys use for actual paid work.

if you are looking to become a pro designer, fair enough of course

[DJ Warmonger]

I'm not noticing a massive price increase.

The Affinity apps originally cost (at release) 49,99 €. They cost 84,99 € now.

Fair enough, of course, if you think the currently discounted price is worth the buy. It's not much, but, as little as I use the apps, I'll stick with v1 for now.

The thing is, they've always been the "poor man's" alternative to the Adobe apps. When they raise and raise the prices, they might simply lose that appeal.

Same here. I'm not a professional and the little workflow improvements in the new version won't justify the significant expense. Especially as there is no crossgrade discount.

[donkey tugger]

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it, but it seems to have been around a long time;

https://pixlr.com

Online photoshop-style editor, and really rather good.

[whyterabbyt]

probably about the same since i last saw them tbh, manc academy iirc?
recognised most of the crowd from various other gigs over the years too, very loyal fan base who seemingly never had work ever

yeah, though i know someone managed to leverage that into some sort of a job as a lecturer or summat in subcultures...

[vurt]

be hilarious if they all were and it was a rush to publish!

[pekbro]

Just a heads up, 3 more days to get clip studio paint for $29 (Pro Version) vs $49.99. Clip Studio Paint, is a great alternative to both Photoshop and Illustrator and the affinity stuff, as it can create both vector and raster artwork, animation, and has a lot of useful features. It's better known in Japan than the states probably, but make no mistake, Clip Studio is one of the best illustration/painting tools available. Though, affinity photo or similar might be better at pure photo editing.

I had to buy it again to get the latest version thanks to Smith Micro bailing out of the content creation tools game. I got the ex version actually, which is $129. The regular Pro version would be sufficient for most anyone around here I would guess.

https://www.clipstudio.net/en/

[BONES]

Those look like pretty specific tools for illustrators. I was going to recommend Xara, which I have been using for around 25 years, since it was at version 2.0. It's grown up a lot and now it's called Xara Designer Pro 19 and it's as full featured as anyone could ever want or need. I've used it for everything from serious packaging design, through complete websites to finished, print-ready artwork for CDs. In fact, any artwork of mine that you have ever seen was done in Xara, including all my Orion skins, all the GUIs for my SynthEdit instruments and effects, DUNE v1's GUI and every iteration of our website.

https://www.magix.com/us/photo-graphic/ ... igner-pro/



Magix acquired it a few years ago and it's kind of stagnated since then but it is so ridiculously full-featured already that it doesn't matter. If you are familiar with Corel Draw, you will feel at home with Xara pretty quickly. It's more of a vector drawing package but it has great tools for working with photos and other raster images, from basics liike colour correction to cool and nodern tools like content-aware scale. Once you import an image file, Xara treats it just like any other object, so you can apply transparency gradients and fills to them, as well as cropping them to any shap eyou like. And when you're finished you can export your artwork in dozens of different formats or publish it as a website.

[pekbro]

Definitely Clip Studio is 'best' suited to illustration, even the animation is frame by frame, e.g. no interpolation, you must draw each frame individually. The ex version is going to be completely useless for any not wanting to do hand drawn animation or comics/graphic novels.

[enroe]

.... also re thread, just use gimp.

+1.

I use GIMP for highly polished and also animated graphics. You can
tell that GIMP is professional by the fact that it can also process
the HEIF format natively! Only a few graphics programs can do this.

I only use Photoshop to be compatible with some colleagues.
Unfortunately, this is still necessary for this. Otherwise you can
do everything wonderfully with GIMP. If you don't believe that,
please visit my website.