OSX Catalina and Creative Suite (Alternatives)

With the update to OS X 10.15, my old license (6.5) of Creative Suite stopped working. Since I only use it to get files ready for copper, magnesium, and polymer, I couldn’t really justify paying the monthly charge for Creative Cloud.

One friend suggested the open source tools InkScape, PoTrace (for raster->vector conversion) and Scribus. To install these you also need to install X11.

Looking for something easier, I found Affinity Publisher in the App Store (along with Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo) - each of which run about $40. I then found Image Vectorizer for raster to vector conversion (a separate utility) with a price of about $5. So, for less than the price of two-three months of Creative Cloud, I’m back in business for casual file prep for polymer and copper.

In Affinity Publisher, to get files ready for submission you need to set the color profile to CMYK and make sure C=0, M=0, Y=0, and K=100 for each object. Then to outline fonts, you select the text block and double click it. It’ll open in a separate window. Do a Select All, then do a Layer/Convert to Curves to do the outlining.

Just thought I’d share this tip for those who need a simpler, less expensive solution than Creative Cloud. Probably not useful to professional printers/designers, but for the hobbyist, hopefully this is helpful.

Regards,

Alan

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I would be curious to what other hobbyists are doing who cannot afford Adobe products. I had access to InDesign, but cannot afford it. It would be nice to have something reasonable when wanting to send a vector graphic to an engraver for making a letterpress cut and not want to hire a graphic artist. I am looking for PC based products. Thank you, Eric

I just did a quick internet search and it seems there are a lot of low priced or maybe even free services that come up for doing conversions. I don’t know more than that, though. I posted a link below as an example. I have had no experience with this organization; just found the link a few minutes ago.

www.autotracer.org