Adobe Creative Cloud is about levelling up! I decided to increase my membership level and subscribe to the entire Creative Cloud suite. It’s really exciting to get access to all those fabulous, industry-standard apps!
My go-to apps are Open Source. The philosophical stance (free, collaborative software) fits my DIY ethos. Way back in the 1980’s, when I was but a little punk rock chick, DIY culture was the the order of the day! We used to make mix tapes, photocopy zines, sew our own clothes and cut our own hair. There was a real vibe about doing it yourself.
When I first got into Internet, DIY culture was still going strong. In fact, the early net was all DIY. I remember my first IT jobs – there was practically nobody with Computer Science degrees! We were all self-taught and therefore, hackers. We hacked around in the back end until we made it work, and that was that.
Obviously, this method is not scaleable. In order for the Internet to grow, there had to be order, consistency and method.
Linux went from being DIY to distributions. WordPress, while still free, uses plenty of paid plugins. And OpenSource design software like Gimp and Inkscape works fine…but doesn’t have the polish of Photoshop or Illustrator. The pattern fills in Inkscape are shockingly simple. I am sure that I could find some user generated patterns, but that would mean digging around the Internet, and a time investment. At the end of the day, I don’t have time for that, and choose to pay for the professional option, rather than pay with my time.
So, by subscribing to Adobe Creative Cloud, I am levelling up! As I was about to publish, I realised that I ought to have created a graphic for this post, so I saved this as a draft and came back to it later.
I logged onto Creative Cloud and installed both Photoshop and Illustrator. (Adobe Acrobat DC was installed this morning, in order to edit a PDF for Hacienda, the Spanish taxman…but that’s another story!) Lickety-split, I made this combined graphic from the wordsoup from yesterday’s post, a photo from a session last summer, and a lovely iridescent fill provided in the app. If the workflow is this good, then the money investment is definitely offset by the time saving.
(Editing before posting, I realise that I need to make a background for the text so it stands out. Tomorrow. Right now, time to go to the beach and get the best sunshine of the day. Peace out, RR)