We had roughly 100 image processers, all volunteers, and was pretty good breakdown of what’s out there that makes sense to use. Photoshop did dominate, but next most popular was GIMP. However, they consistently ran into problems with things like vector masks, support for various colorspaces and bit depth combos and overall stability when pushed hard.

 

A smaller subset including one of leads used Corel Paint. They always produced stunning work and can’t recall but a few things that they could not do. My vote for best alternative.

 

However, all the really heavy lifting for image processing had to be done in Photoshop when you get to stuff like scripting, massive files, sending complex layers to AE, working in 32-bit etc.

 

And yeah, nothing like AE exists out there as real alternative for its broad toolset and timeline based approach – only people better served by nodal approach should looks elsewhere. My two cents if Photoshop and AE are your primary tools in CC, CC is by far the best option for those tasks and worth the hassle of the baggage that comes with it.

 

Best,

 

stephen van vuuren

336.202.4777

 

http://www.insaturnsrings.com/

 

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

–Stanley Kubrick

 

 

 

 

I like this question, because there are several alternatives to Premiere, one that I know of to Illustrator, but none to Ae that isn’t crazy expensive and a total re-learn.  Since I use all of these almost daily in my work, plus AME and Bridge, the CC subscription seems suitable and reasonably priced.