Your Own Creative Cloud.
Happily living it up in the design world — without Adobe.
Although this isn’t exactly the cloud that Adobe sells — the cloud is just a place for you to back up and keep your files safe. You can do this easily by managing your projects and data and utilizing G Drive or Drop Box.
After a trial and comparison of design software, here’s my list of some great applications that I rely on since disconnecting from the other creative cloud. Some are on par and some are better than what I’ve used in the past. Try for yourselves!
Pixel based editing software
AFFINITY PHOTO (Photoshop Alternative)
Affinity Photo has become the first choice for photography and creative professionals around the world, who love its speed, power and precision. Born to work hand-in-hand with the latest powerful computer technology, it’s the only fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS.
Vector based software
AFFINITY DESIGNER (Illustrator Alternative)
Affinity Designer has truly changed the world of graphic design. Five years of intensive refinement since launch have been dedicated to our unwavering vision of a powerful, super-smooth app which improves your workflow and allows your creativity to shine.
Affinity Designer is a stripped back, pro-end workhorse that will always get your job done.
Page layout & design
AFFINITY PUBLISHER (InDesign Alternative)
Bring your vision to life with Affinity Publisher, the next generation of professional publishing software. From magazines, books, brochures, posters, reports and stationery to other creations, this incredibly smooth, intuitive app gives you the power to combine your images, graphics and text to make beautiful layouts ready for publication.
Photo imaging & processing
A fantastic Lightroom alternative.
Capture One has been developed with image quality and ease of use in mind. Every tool is designed to give you full control of all aspects of the editing process — preserving, recovering and optimizing all information from your RAW files. The full range of tools offer extensive possibilities to always achieve perfect results.
Video editing & motion graphics
Video Editing (Premier Alternative)
One of my favourite tools to work in — beautiful, well thought out and fast user interface. The experience makes me want to work in Davinci Resolve Studio all the time! Best alternative to Premier and After Effects.
DaVinci Resolve 16 is the world’s only solution that combines professional 8K editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in one software tool! You can instantly move between editing, color, effects, and audio with a single click. DaVinci Resolve Studio is also the only solution designed for multi user collaboration so editors, assistants, colorists, VFX artists and sound designers can all work live on the same project at the same time! Whether you’re an individual artist, or part of a large collaborative team, it’s easy to see why DaVinci Resolve is the standard for high end post production and finishing on more Hollywood feature films, television shows and commercials than any other software.
Web development
Web development software and tools for front-end developers.
CODA
You code for the web. You demand a fast, clean, and powerful text editor. Pixel-perfect preview. A built-in way to open and manage your local and remote files. And maybe a dash of SSH. Say hello, Coda.
FTP UTILITY
The gold standard of macOS file transfer apps just drove into the future. Transmit 5 is here. Upload, download, and manage files on tons of servers with an easy, familiar, and powerful UI. It’s quite good.
TEXT / CODE EDITOR
Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. You’ll love the slick user interface, extraordinary features and amazing performance.
PDF Tools
Tough to get around this one..
If you don’t require advanced PDF techniques and features (forms, security, etc.) here are two options that work well (together) for me:
MAC PREVIEW
PDF Element
I’d love to hear your thoughts or feedback. If you have some tools that help you create that you love — please share!
