I switched my laptop to Windows, so I had to give up using my Adobe Creative Suite CS5 (Mac ver). Unlike long ago, Adobe completely changed their business model to subscription based. If I want to use Photoshop and Illustrator – I would have to purchase CreativeCloud All Apps which is 20USD (with educational discount- if you’re not a student or a teacher, you have to pay 40USD) per month.
I only use Photoshop and Illustrator occasionally outside of work so I wasn’t really convinced with investing that worth of money. I would have subscribed to it if they offered Photoshop and Illustrator bundle for 10USD/month but they don’t have such a bundle.
Then, I found out about Corel’s CorelDraw Graphic Suite. It has Illustrator and Photoshop alternative and it’s 129CAD for educational edition(without the discount 649CAD but they have a Black Friday deal now ). That’s a lot cheaper, and since it’s based on CAD, I won’t be suffering from the exchange rate fluctuation!
So I decided to purchase it and experiment around – so far it’s good. The UI is windows-based so it may take a while to get used to it, but it has all the features I need (Stamp tool, spot healing brush, layers, raw file editing, vector drawing, shape merging tool, etc.) so I am happy with it.
For those who are looking for Creative Suite alternative, I will recommend Corel product. It’s nice to support Canadian business too if you reside in Canada… 🙂
