Software for the M1 Mac Mini

[Wingsley]

I am seriously leaning toward buying a refurbished M1 Mac Mini w/ 16 GB of RAM from Apple direct.

Previously, I had an agreement with a local business office that gave me a partially-subsidized subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (ACC), which gave me access to InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, etc. on my aging Intel iMac.

I will not immediately be in a position to resume an ACC subscription whenI get the new Mac Mini. It will take time to build up some money. My long-term goal is to get a full ACC subscription so I can do graphics work. (Not my primary work, but very useful for several projects I do every year.)

I'm wondering what kind of low-cost (or freeware) solutions are available for the tasks I want to do. Here are some of the basic tasks that will be needed in the coming weeks and months:

• I need to generate memes and slides of a few memes to promote upcoming events and activities. Said memes will be for use on Instagram and Facebook primarily, maybe for Twitter. Memes may be simple, with just a simple background (or maybe a faded and color-shaded photo) with text announcing the event/activity on top. Is there a way to set up Keynote to generate meme images as slides, then save the slides as JPEGs, and use the JPEGs as "photos" for social media? What are best pixel dimensions (or proportions) for IG and Facebook memes?
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• I will probably use Apple Pages and Microsoft Word to generate basic flyers and posters. That would be simple, no frills desktop publishing. I have both Pages and Office 365.
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• Do you need any special software to post multiple photos to a basic Instagram account's feed?
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• Currently, I have no access to Acrobat Pro. Therefore, I cannot do any "reduce file size" operations or re-arranging of pages in PDF files. Is there any cheap PDF improvement software available for Apple Silicon Macs?
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• Solutions should probably be Apple Silicon-friendly software, if new software is needed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Have you checked out Photoshop Elements? It's the low-cost, consumer version of Photoshop... you can usually find it at Costco/Sams Club and online outlets for $60 or so... it's a watered-down version of PS, but more than adequate, with a lot of similarity in tools, and workflow.

Unfortunately, there are no consumer versions of Illustrator or InDesign... you can also go in a another direction with the Affinity programs (Photo, Designer and Publisher)... but they would require you to relearn some processes and have a totally different workflow. They do run on Apple silicon.

 

[TP2]

You probably do not need ACC, especially if your primary work is not graphic design. Affinity's software suite is much more affordable and plenty capable. While it does not match ACC feature for feature it does match the essentials. Some things it does better. I often use Affinity Publisher for working with PDFs because it edits them better than Acrobat.

See recent review here...

Affinity Designer vs Adobe Illustrator

Discover the right graphic design software for you with our guide to Affinity Designer vs Illustrator.

www.creativebloq.com

 

[TightLines]

You probably do not need ACC, especially if your primary work is not graphic design. Affinity's software suite is much more affordable and plenty capable. While it does not match ACC feature for feature it does match the essentials. Some things it does better. I often use Affinity Publisher for working with PDFs because it edits them better than Acrobat.

See recent review here...

Affinity Designer vs Adobe Illustrator

Discover the right graphic design software for you with our guide to Affinity Designer vs Illustrator.

www.creativebloq.com

I agree about the Affinity software - its superior to Adobe, and far far cheaper... and for .pdf editing, i would suggest going with PDF Elements > https://pdf.wondershare.net < for $129 you can get a lifetime license... again, far, far cheaper than the Adobe product, and word is its even better than Acrobat.