Adobe Illustrator alternatives

* Inkscape and Sketch - simply because Illustrator seems to be too expensive for occasional use (I'm not a designer, I just need it sometimes to create or edit vector graphics). Inksape doesn't work too well on macOS though. * Canva for simple designs like flyers, social media content, private use like birthday invitations, etc. where you can just use a predefined design.

I am using Figma more and more for all things, including Illustrations.

I've completely phased out Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign and switched to the Affinity pendants, which are quite impressive given the extremely low price, fast evolution of the software, innovative features (e.g. integration of Photo as "Persona" in Publisher) and perpetual licensing model. My current observations: *) Adobe Illustrator vs. Affinity Designer: the software I use least so I can't really comment on it. However I remember how cumbersome it has always been as an occasional Illustrator user to deal with its UI working completely different than Photoshop's and InDesign's, e.g. color palette and styles handling etc... The lllustrator UI is the most unintuitive in the lineup, and what Adobe charges for this piece of legacy software that has stopped evolving is insane IMHO *) Photoshop vs. Photo: Affinity photo has a good feature set, nice UI, but while being great in its overall feature set, frustratingly it still lacks some very basic features if you come from Photoshop. Just an example, Photoshop's Free Transform tool as an operation you just take for granted, but miss dearly in Photo. Again, the pace of updates on Affinity's side is stunning and I guess in a few years, most of these features will be available there too *) InDesign vs. Publisher: I find Publisher the most impressive replacement for the respective Adobe product, mainly due to the innovative way that inheritance of elements works. Some potential is lost in the ease of management of text and paragraph styles which is not optimal in both of the programs, but IMHO in InDesign I have a much better overview on which styles are applied to a certain piece of text, and replacing styles is more straightforward. I'm not sure if it's possible with current versions of InDesign, but the capability to just open and freely edit PDFs in Publisher is amazing. If Adobe still lacks behind in this regard, being the original creater of the PDF format, it just shows their incompetence to create a truly integrated suite of creative software and not just a collection of independently developed legacy apps with seemingly similar UIs but totally different approaches to similar tasks, and inner workings. Not to mention that I prefer my system to be tidy and not install any crappy background licensing services like Creative Cloud - I don't need the cloud stuff anyway. It feels great to have installers of single programs where you enter a license number and it does not install a bunch of system services that are constantly running in the background. So, particularly compared to OSS alternatives, I think Affinity is the main contender for Adobe if you are in professional design and publishing, especially for individual artists and freelancers (agencies and larger publishers will most likely miss collaborative features). I never thought I would, but in the end I was able to adapt to the lack of some features and enjoy the many advantages of Affinity, particularly considering the perpetual license of all three programs costs not even as much as 3 months of Adobe subscription.

use Affinity pendants as they support import of adobe file formats and the pricing is more than adequate

I been researching this the other day to make a post. I'll put my findings here. 1. Affinity Designer Affinity Designer is a worthy contestant to Illustrator. Besides offering most of the tools Illustrator has, it does a few things differently. In any case the learning curve is small. The best part is that it is only $54.99. Also available on iPad. 2. Amadine Amadine is a new discovery that has quickly become a favourite. The UI is very familiar and the tool responds like a charm. Best thing is it sells for a super affordable one-time payment price of $19.99. Also has an iPad version. 3. Vectornator You might miss some of the tools that you normally use, but in general it works pretty well. This tool is FREE so you really can't complain. The export is in SVG and not EPS. 4. Protosketch If iPad is your tool of choice this might be a great option for you. Currently it’s available for iPad for a symbolic price of $2.99. They are currently developing a desktop version which is in beta. Definitely one to keep out an eye for. 5. Graphic Graphic by Picta is a lightweight vector tool with a number of powerful features. However, it might take some time to get used to the UI. One-time purchase at a very affordable price of $29.99. The export is in SVG and not EPS. I have also seen some people use Procreate and the vectorize with illustrator.