Part time local college course for low cost Adobe

Adobe is a subscription, so it'll only last the duration of the course. Are you prepared to take a course every year to keep it going? Or is one year enough?

You could have a look at Affinity, who sell Adobe-competitiors without the subscription.

Theo

Or if you don't need the latest versions, the the entire CS2 edition of all the main tools is effectively available as a "free" perpetual license...

(they made a cockup turning off their activations servers at some point meaning legit owners could not re-install. So they published a version that did not need activation, and it leaked. It is still out there).

I did subscribe to Adobe software for several years, before I retired. So I'm used to it. I'm now looking at affinity as you suggested, thanks.

Thanks, It's quite hard to find in my limited on-line world. In my search for it I keep seeing that it's a problem to run on anything other than older computers and OS's.

What is the local collage offering? I been on training courses associated with the software I used to use at work and in general found them not to be too useful. For instance, if the software comes with two hundred menu options the training often consists of mainly taking you through each one in turn and trying to give some idea of what each does. In real life the chances of using more than 10 options on a daily basis is rare. The course does not teach how to do a project start to finish, even a simple Noddy project. On other courses you only get the most benefit if you have the basic, and some advanced, experience before you go on the course. These days I've found that Youtube tutorials to be a great source of information for software that is commonly available. You can work at your own pace and "rewind" back to a procedure to view again.

What are you attempting to achieve with Adobe?

As far as the particular college course is concerned, I was thinking of the simplest and least demanding of any kind, just so I could qualify for the student Adobe subscription prices.

At the moment I just want to produce a local magazine, though I would develop several more projects based on the availability of suitable software.

I thinks YouTube is absolutely amazing for instructional videos. So I purchased 4K Video Downloader so as to have them available offline and without adverts.

Ive had a look at the Affinity software and have decided to go for it. It looks like it will cover my needs, and Adobe Software is a kind of monopolistic extortion. Except perhaps, not any more.

If you ever used any Serif software (DrawPlus, PagePlus, Craft Artist etc.), Affinity is a trade name of Serif.

Seemed ok to me when I tried it just now (running in windows sandbox):

Also worth looking at the recent 3.x release of GIMP - they have made the UI very much like Ps now, and PSD file format compatibility is also much improved.

Thanks for the info. I wonder how the software you mention here compares in function, quality and price with the current suite of Affinity programs. It's certainly something else for me to research.

I'm sure you're right. I must pursue the possibility with more energy and enthusiasm.

I have had the app you mention for some time. Now that I have the specific need to produce a magazine, I should review how to use Inkscape and GIMP to this end.

I find the pro-level software has steep learning curves. I can just about get a handle on Photoshop for example. Then have to relearn most of it if I don't use it for a month or so. I used to teach GIS (at a basic level) and found I'd forgotten most of it when I tried recently. Of course (hopefully!) YMMV.

Sounds like you'll need DTP - InDesign I think is Adobe's stab. I find old copies of PageMaker work prefectly well. I think it's PM6 I've got running on W10.

But I use a Mac most of time. I had to do a few A4 info sheets and similar recently - Apple's Pages worked perfectly well, with some very usable templates including newsletters. (Even) I can use that pretty much from standing.

Excellent. Now for some newsletters :-)

No, Serif now produces only Affinity applications, all the older 'legacy' Plus programs are abandoned, and they are old, I used to use them a couple of decades ago. What has been annoying is that Craft Artist Professional, much more recent, is also abandoned, and many people are still using it as there is no real alternative. It would have been kind of Serif to open-source it, as it could then be maintained by volunteers. I'm sure that very little of the code in it is re-used in the Affinity products.

The free option which I find pretty easy to uses is 'Scribus' Its well good enough for brochures and flyers.

Scribus works on Mac OSX Winders and Linux.

Drop me an email if you need guidance on a source of the right version...

Indeed it does - looks good, thanks.

Thanks John, I'll do that.