Hello fellow NosillaCastaways. Allister here again, from New Zealand with perhaps a surprising answer to a common question. The problem to be solved? Numerous times in the last few years I have heard podcasters addressing the question \u201cWhat software should I use instead of Photoshop?\u201d<\/p>\n
The usual answers include The GiMP<\/a>, Acorn<\/a> and Pixelmator<\/a>. Certainly all three of these apps are powerful and functional for many purposes. The GiMP, in particular, is aimed squarely at taking on Photoshop although it lacks some finesse in the interface, being open source and cross platform. Acorn has been improving in leaps and bounds as has Pixelmator which recently added yet another Photoshop-inspired feature with layer styles. Both of these have great interfaces. The primary, perhaps only, reason the question arises is the high cost of Photoshop. Everyone seems to think of it as both \u201cthe best of breed\u201d and \u201cthe most expensive.\u201d But it doesn\u2019t have to be. Right now, Adobe have a limited time offer. I can\u2019t tell you when it runs out, but I took advantage of it as soon as it appeared and it\u2019s still available 6 months later, so it\u2019s not fleeting. Still, if you\u2019re interested, it\u2019s best you get along there soonest in case it is about to go away.<\/p>\n The deal is called the Photoshop Photography Program<\/a> and costs only $9.99 per month if you commit to a year of membership. Yes, it\u2019s one of those Creative Cloud subscription things. Now I bet the first thing you\u2019re going to think is \u201cWait a minute, 10 bucks a month for a year, that\u2019s 120 bucks for just one year!\u201d Or perhaps if you\u2019re an engineer you\u2019ll at least admit it is only $119.88. Sounds expensive, right? Well, yes and no.<\/p>\n Have you ever stopped before buying your daily cup of coffee and thought \u201cHey, a coffee a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year \u2013 holy cow! That\u2019s $500 for coffee! And I don\u2019t even have anything left at the end of the year!\u201d Yeah, I didn\u2019t think so. What about your favourite alcoholic drink? Or cigarettes? Or chocolate bars?<\/p>\n Still think it\u2019s expensive? Did I mention that for your money you also get to use Lightroom? I used to be a Lightroom user until I made the decision to switch to Aperture. If the act of switching (in either direction) wasn\u2019t such a tear, I\u2019d have no issues going back to Lightroom. To quote my brother \u2013 amateur photographer and professional Photoshop user \u2013 \u201cLightroom is one seriously sorted piece of software.\u201d<\/p>\n Oh, and you\u2019ll also get 20GB of cloud storage and a Behance ProSite<\/a> thrown in \u2013 a photo portfolio offering from Adobe. You\u2019ll also get all software updates for free \u2013 much like with Apple. The software does \u2018phone home\u2019 to check on your subscription but only does so once a month and it has been flawless for me. And although you have to commit to a year, Adobe bill you monthly, so there\u2019s no big initial outlay.<\/p>\n Have you ever looked for Pixelmator tutorials and resources? They\u2019re out there and there are some great ones. I\u2019m sure there are Acorn ones too. Want a Photoshop tutorial? OK, there\u2019s one downside \u2013 you\u2019ll have to hunt for the best out of thousands and thousands<\/a> of them. Or join one of the many<\/a> communities<\/a> that have grown around this genre-defining piece of software. There\u2019s even a pretty good chance you know someone who has Photoshop skills \u2013 this software has been maturing for over 20 years and has become an industry standard tool in visual arts.<\/p>\n You know how you\u2019ve been trying to find the best software that measures up to Photoshop? Well, hey, Photoshop measures up really well on that scale. Perfect score!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello fellow NosillaCastaways. Allister here again, from New Zealand with perhaps a surprising answer to a common question. The problem to be solved? Numerous times in the last few years I have heard podcasters addressing the question \u201cWhat software should I use instead of Photoshop?\u201d The usual answers include The GiMP, Acorn and Pixelmator. Certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5076"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5089,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5076\/revisions\/5089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAll three of the apps I have mentioned address the typical use case of Photoshop \u2013 general graphics processing. If you\u2019re simply looking to fix your photo exposure, maybe do a crop and clone out some dust specks, then iPhoto, Aperture or perhaps Adobe Lightroom are frequent, and great, suggestions. But I have one more suggestion which you may not have thought of. If you\u2019re thinking you need something \u201cPhotoshop-like,\u201d how about\u2026 Photoshop?<\/p>\n