Many of you have heard of and used Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, programs which are pretty widely reviewed to be every bit as good and in some cases better than their counterparts, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Because of the price differences and because Affinity's products include full-featured iPad versions, many people have switched.
Affinity products each cost about $50 for the computer version and $20 for the iPad version. One-time purchase. Updates free.
But there has been no alternative to InDesign... which has kept many people who wanted options stuck in the Adobe creative cloud.
BUT Affinity released their FREE Beta version of Affinity Publisher a few months ago, and I just found out about it. HOORAY!! I hope to download it soon and start to poke around. I've been panicking about the cost of an Adobe subscription... so this option excites me!
All the reviews I've read so far praise this Beta as a robust competitor, though clearly in early stages of design. It does some things InDesign doesn't do that people like, and it lacks some features people miss.
If you need more in the creative cloud than Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and of course if you've worked in them forever and are perfectly happy, paying that subscription price could be for you. But if you are a newb or looking for an alternative, then buying these programs is surely more cost effective. Even if you purchase all three for both computer and iPad, the total cost (without coupon or sales) is $210 (assuming that Affinity Publisher is priced like Affinity's other programs)...and since Adobe is $53 a month, well, you can see you even out in about four months.
Anyhow, I won't stick in a bunch of links, as you can Google for yourselves and check out reviews or demos or tutorials or whatever as you like. Tons of things exist on youtube. I am fond of the tutorials/reviews done by Brad Colbow. And Affinity itself has lots of vids.
Mostly I just wanted to share!
I'd be really curious to see what others think if you check this out.
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