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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 Prior to October 2025 the University had a site license for the Affinity graphics software suite - Photo, Publisher and Designer - with free 1 year licenses for students to use on personal computers, but then Canva, the new owners of Affinity, announced that they were releasing a new version of Affinity which is free for all users. To obtain Affinity you need to create a (free) Canva account and download the software at: https://www.affinity.studio/get-affinity 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: Although not ideal, much can be achieved with PowerPoint in terms of page design and layout. Some students used Microsoft Publisher but it is important to note that it reaches end of life in October 2026 and after that it will be removed from Office 365 and users will lose the ability to open or edit .pub files. 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

Prior to October 2025 the University had a site license for the Affinity graphics software suite - Photo, Publisher and Designer - with free 1 year licenses for students to use on personal computers, but then Canva, the new owners of Affinity, announced that they were releasing a new version of Affinity which is free for all users.

To obtain Affinity you need to create a (free) Canva account and download the software at: https://www.affinity.studio/get-affinity

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:
Although not ideal, much can be achieved with PowerPoint in terms of page design and layout. Some students used Microsoft Publisher but it is important to note that it reaches end of life in October 2026 and after that it will be removed from Office 365 and users will lose the ability to open or edit .pub files.

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