Which Adobe software to purchase?

N0215900

I Am a Business Management and Marketing graduate. I would love to pursue a career in Marketing or advertising.

In my spare time I like to draw and paint. Because of this I thought that in order to create a great marketing portfolio I would include some spec print designs that would be intended for magazines and other publications.

This would help show off my creativity and idea generation.

But I am stuck. I do not know which Adobe software I need to purchase.

I only intend to use the software to create print ads, nothing else, no video making, website design nothing else.

What software do I need Illustrator, In-design, Photoshop? or more than just one of them??

All relevant comments are welcome.

santer_2

Most of their software has a trial version, try any you want then pick the one which suits you best

http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html?promoid=DTEMJ

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/?Submit=Go

See if you qualify for the educational versions

N0215900

I tried the download but I had to re-install it before I had the opportunity to open it so now I have to enter a serial number, which means I have to pay for it.

How do I know I can qualify for the educational discounted ones without purchasing? I have a student card but I don't want to purchase anything to then be told I have to pay the full amount.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your reply as it got straight to the point.

santer_2

Qualified individuals include:

• University and college students — students enrolled at a higher education institution defined as an accredited public or private university or college (including community, junior, or vocational college) that grants degrees requiring not less than the equivalent of two years of full-time study1
• Primary and secondary school students — students enrolled at an accredited public or private primary or secondary school providing full-time instruction1
• Faculty and staff — teachers and staff employed by an accredited primary or secondary school, public or private university or college, school district, or board of education (including emeritus status professors)1
• Homeschooled students and their teachers — students and teachers as defined by state homeschooling regulations

http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/qualify.html

https://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-EDU-UK&nr=1&event=displayEduConditions

See here for the other download

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/187/tn_18759.html#main_Technical_support_for_product_trials

N0215900

Cheers!!!!!!!!!!

seanm99

I work in Marketing and spend a significant amount of time designing advertisements and brochures. I find the following software useful:

-Photoshop for manipulating photographs
-Illustrator for vector graphics (logos mainly)
-InDesign or QuarkXpress for page layouts and creating the final ad/brochure

If you do not qualify for student pricing these are very expensive to buy yourself. However it is often possible to get older versions much cheaper. I use CS5 at work but can get the same results with CS2 most of the time.

Stompa

Another option might be to go for (free) open source alternatives:

http://www.osalt.com/graphic-applications

N0215900

Seanm99 I am only looking to produce around 10-15 spec ads just to show my creativity and someone that is familiar with the programs you suggested is more likely to get a job than someone who simply has a degree or a degree in marketing.

With that in mind should I just go for an older version? +how much can i get an older version for?

everett_psycho

seanm99 wrote: »

I work in Marketing and spend a significant amount of time designing advertisements and brochures. I find the following software useful:

-Photoshop for manipulating photographs
-Illustrator for vector graphics (logos mainly)
-InDesign or QuarkXpress for page layouts and creating the final ad/brochure

If you do not qualify for student pricing these are very expensive to buy yourself. However it is often possible to get older versions much cheaper. I use CS5 at work but can get the same results with CS2 most of the time.

these are the 3 our graphic designers use to produce all sorts of stuff. Give the open source ones a shot, some people struggle with these package, I found it tricky without some guidance and still don't really get them. It would probably help you if you want to go in to advertising and marketing to at least know some basics in the packages and more importantly know what they can and can't achieve

JuniorDesigner

I think Illustrator would be your best bet, there are templates from Adobe for Advertisements and such and they wouldn't have it on there if you couldn't use Illustrator for it.

Illustrator is great for getting clean, crisp, professional graphics at print quality too. Personally I find Indesign to be a bit 'messy' if you like in it's structure.

boyse7en

As you are planning to use this software to bolster your CV and make you more attractive to employers, I'd find some way of using the Adobe software rather than open-source equivalents (if there are any).

Adobe is pretty much (barring Quark Xpress) the standard software for any professional publishing environment. Having experience of the packages is definitely a plus.

I use Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign to create a monthly trade magazine, and these will allow you do pretty much anything that you want to in for print. They are expensive though, so if you need just one, I'd go for Photoshop. It has plenty of tools for raster image manipulation and creation, plus it can also create (fairly rudimentary) vector shapes, and it treats text as a vector too.

Illustrator doesn't give you many options for editing photographs, but has much better text and vector shape creation and manipulation.

Be warned though - these are not particularly user-friendly bits of software. They are professional bits of kit and the learning curve can be pretty steep.