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Class	Question	Answer
Homeworking	Can I get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and if not what should I do? FAQ Direct Link	Adobe software is very expensive and they no longer offer perpetual licenses so you can use the software only as long as you keep paying. They offer a reduced rate for students however even that is still expensive particularly for relatively infrequent users: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html?promoid=NV3KR7S1&mv=other The University has a site license for the Affinity graphics software suite - Photo, Publisher and Designer - and free 1 year licenses are available to all students to use on personal computers. The Affinity products are broadly equivalent to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator and are now legitimate alternatives with many design houses using these products instead of Adobe. Should you prefer to buy your own license, their pricing is very competitive (often discounted) and is a one off payment. They are also currently providing a 90 day trial for students https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/ More information and a link to request a student license can be found on 'DMEM Student Resource Page' on Myplace: https://classes.myplace.strath.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=21821#section-36 Note that often the preference for either Adobe or Affinity is their exact colour control for printing. However, excellent results (onscreen and in print) and most of the same onscreen effects and features can be achieved using different and freely available software. Free Photoshop alternatives: GIMP is an open source (free) photo editor which has a very similar feature set to Adobe Photoshop – there is very little that could not be achieved with GIMP and there is good community support and tutorials available https://www.gimp.org/ Free Indesign alternatives: Much can be achieved with PowerPoint in terms of page design and layout. As a Strathclyde student you should also be able to access Microsoft Publisher which has a very small learning curve and is effective for creating folio, brochure and poster layouts. An open source alternative is Scribus https://www.scribus.net/ Free Illustrator alternatives: Illustration and creation of vector graphics is probably a less commonly utilised tool for DMEM students. However, there are good opportunities in folio creation for this and there is a very good open source alternative in Inkscape https://inkscape.org/ This article brings up more options, some of which are paid but have free versions: https://lifehacker.com/27-free-alternatives-to-adobes-expensive-app-subscripti-1831737178

Class

Question

Answer

Homeworking

Can I get Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and if not what should I do?

FAQ Direct Link

Adobe software is very expensive and they no longer offer perpetual licenses so you can use the software only as long as you keep paying. They offer a reduced rate for students however even that is still expensive particularly for relatively infrequent users: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/plans.html?promoid=NV3KR7S1&mv=other

The University has a site license for the Affinity graphics software suite - Photo, Publisher and Designer - and free 1 year licenses are available to all students to use on personal computers. The Affinity products are broadly equivalent to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator and are now legitimate alternatives with many design houses using these products instead of Adobe. Should you prefer to buy your own license, their pricing is very competitive (often discounted) and is a one off payment. They are also currently providing a 90 day trial for students https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/
More information and a link to request a student license can be found on 'DMEM Student Resource Page' on Myplace: https://classes.myplace.strath.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=21821#section-36

Note that often the preference for either Adobe or Affinity is their exact colour control for printing. However, excellent results (onscreen and in print) and most of the same onscreen effects and features can be achieved using different and freely available software.

Free Photoshop alternatives:
GIMP is an open source (free) photo editor which has a very similar feature set to Adobe Photoshop – there is very little that could not be achieved with GIMP and there is good community support and tutorials available https://www.gimp.org/

Free Indesign alternatives:
Much can be achieved with PowerPoint in terms of page design and layout. As a Strathclyde student you should also be able to access Microsoft Publisher which has a very small learning curve and is effective for creating folio, brochure and poster layouts. An open source alternative is Scribus https://www.scribus.net/

Free Illustrator alternatives:
Illustration and creation of vector graphics is probably a less commonly utilised tool for DMEM students. However, there are good opportunities in folio creation for this and there is a very good open source alternative in Inkscape https://inkscape.org/

This article brings up more options, some of which are paid but have free versions: https://lifehacker.com/27-free-alternatives-to-adobes-expensive-app-subscripti-1831737178