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branchandrootSo, for several reasons including Adobe's increasing idiocy in re their pricing and distribution model and also the vastly greater ease of getting ahold of them, I'm experimenting with replacing my two biggest Adobe software workhorses with open source alternatives.
So far, this involves one day per app of utter, screaming frustration while mashing buttons and googling documentation and cursing wildly, and a second day where everything starts to make sense and work nicely and I stop wanting to kill the developers with the power of my mind. That's actually a pretty good ratio.
Dreamweaver -> Aptana Studio 3: Aptana is even more powerful than Dreamweaver, in a lot of ways, and incorporates a lot more OS and collaborative development tools like git. Of course, this means it's even more confusing to look at. Once I'd spent the one frustrated and screaming day, though, I found the bits I needed, went and started up my native installation of Apache AGAIN (fuck you so very much, Apple, for turning that off with every OS upgrade and not even giving me a freaking preference pane to turn it on with any more, and did I mention the part about changing the default root folder, seriously, fuck you) and everything worked nicely. Sites, or now Projects, are defined, with ftp upload/download settings in place, I found a black-on-white code color theme (handily named "Dreamweaver" for code immigrants) and the design view, or now Preview, is working smoothly. I like the real-time feedback of the Console pane, too, which gives me command-line reflections of whatever I'm doing when connected to the remote sites. Having the remote site view be its own tab is also really handy.
Photoshop -> Gimp: Now, I actually started out with Gimp many years ago, so I thought this acclimation would go faster. Ahahaha, it is to be laughing. Nope, still one day of utter, screaming frustration and banging on the desk and asking thin air why anyone would ever think that defaulting the Move tool to grab whatever it hovers on instead of the active layer was a good idea. Once I got to day two, though, I found my tools again, remembered where the settings are and to check them the first time, and have decided that I may actually like Gimp's workspace layout better than Photoshop's. Photoshop has resorted to stacking tools on top of each other, and I found that more than a bit annoying. Gimp spreads them out over a lot of different panes, which can be very frustrating at first, but I still like being able to see all my stuff better than having it hidden in a button stack. At any rate, I successfully designed an ebook cover, which involved a lot of layers and text and messing around with growing and shrinking things and tinkering with colors and fonts; it all worked, and I have a cover I'm satisfied with, which seems like a good indicator.
General conclusion: This will work, but you need to be the kind of person who's willing to bang on it and google the forums and, in the final analysis, just click on things until you start getting the hang of it. I strongly recommend starting with a non-vital scratch project, each time, so you don't worry about destroying important work and can try, and erase, and swear at gods and devs as much as necessary.
The only thing I can say about Inkscape is that clicking blindly on stuff until the right thing happens works just as well as it does in Illustrator. I never used Indesign, so someone else will have to review Scribus, but I have a copy on hand at least, should I ever need it. I raise a toast to Adobe putting themselves out of most of their business. *clinks glasses all around*
So far, this involves one day per app of utter, screaming frustration while mashing buttons and googling documentation and cursing wildly, and a second day where everything starts to make sense and work nicely and I stop wanting to kill the developers with the power of my mind. That's actually a pretty good ratio.
Dreamweaver -> Aptana Studio 3: Aptana is even more powerful than Dreamweaver, in a lot of ways, and incorporates a lot more OS and collaborative development tools like git. Of course, this means it's even more confusing to look at. Once I'd spent the one frustrated and screaming day, though, I found the bits I needed, went and started up my native installation of Apache AGAIN (fuck you so very much, Apple, for turning that off with every OS upgrade and not even giving me a freaking preference pane to turn it on with any more, and did I mention the part about changing the default root folder, seriously, fuck you) and everything worked nicely. Sites, or now Projects, are defined, with ftp upload/download settings in place, I found a black-on-white code color theme (handily named "Dreamweaver" for code immigrants) and the design view, or now Preview, is working smoothly. I like the real-time feedback of the Console pane, too, which gives me command-line reflections of whatever I'm doing when connected to the remote sites. Having the remote site view be its own tab is also really handy.
Photoshop -> Gimp: Now, I actually started out with Gimp many years ago, so I thought this acclimation would go faster. Ahahaha, it is to be laughing. Nope, still one day of utter, screaming frustration and banging on the desk and asking thin air why anyone would ever think that defaulting the Move tool to grab whatever it hovers on instead of the active layer was a good idea. Once I got to day two, though, I found my tools again, remembered where the settings are and to check them the first time, and have decided that I may actually like Gimp's workspace layout better than Photoshop's. Photoshop has resorted to stacking tools on top of each other, and I found that more than a bit annoying. Gimp spreads them out over a lot of different panes, which can be very frustrating at first, but I still like being able to see all my stuff better than having it hidden in a button stack. At any rate, I successfully designed an ebook cover, which involved a lot of layers and text and messing around with growing and shrinking things and tinkering with colors and fonts; it all worked, and I have a cover I'm satisfied with, which seems like a good indicator.
General conclusion: This will work, but you need to be the kind of person who's willing to bang on it and google the forums and, in the final analysis, just click on things until you start getting the hang of it. I strongly recommend starting with a non-vital scratch project, each time, so you don't worry about destroying important work and can try, and erase, and swear at gods and devs as much as necessary.
The only thing I can say about Inkscape is that clicking blindly on stuff until the right thing happens works just as well as it does in Illustrator. I never used Indesign, so someone else will have to review Scribus, but I have a copy on hand at least, should I ever need it. I raise a toast to Adobe putting themselves out of most of their business. *clinks glasses all around*
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 06:35 pm (UTC)The two programs are much of a muchness for basic purposes like that, though; neither is very easy or intuitive for new users because both do so very much. So I'd say, use whichever one you're most likely to need to keep using. If work is All Adobe, you might want to learn on Dreamweaver. If it's something you'll want to do/keep doing for yourself at home, you may want Aptana.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 09:58 pm (UTC)Most of my investigation has been to try and find a good OSS alternative to Lightroom, because I deal with lots of cosplay photos and Lightroom will flat-out not run under Wine. Darktable is a good Linux alt, though I hope one of the recent updates fixed the thing where when it maxed out the CPU the entire program just force-quit.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 10:46 pm (UTC)*winces* Yeah, that's a pretty significant bug. I will think good-update thoughts. Along with my thoughts directed at the Aptana team, hoping they fix the display glitch in Preview, where the toolbar refuses to sit on top and instead forces the actual page over into the other half of the screen. Always the little problems cropping up.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 10:52 pm (UTC)Usually with me and GIMP it's a 'but where did [x] go help I can't find it argh /flips tables'
And yeah - I realize I'm running kind of a crappy CPU for photo processing, but seriously, I'd be okay with hang and lagtime. Force-quitting just loses all my work. Of course, I couldn't find anyone else reporting that bug so, who knows. ~LINUX~
(I say that, but I know after five years of using Ubuntu and derivatives as my OS, I'd go up a wall with all the missing apps if I swapped. That and I like that my file manager can handle SFTP folders.)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-20 06:21 pm (UTC)::you need to be the kind of person who's willing to bang on it and google the forums::
Of course, that tends to be my experience of the Adobe tools too -- once I'm out of my comfort zone of regular activites, it's all mashing buttons and googling documentation anyway...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-20 06:25 pm (UTC)Still no lawn people. Does Co have a mower?