1. Inventory what your work actually depends on
Open your three most recent real projects and list everything they touch beyond the app itself. This is the step most people skip, and it is the step that decides whether switching is a weekend experiment or a lost client job.
- Third-party plug-ins, actions, brushes and LUTs
- Cloud libraries, shared assets and brand kits
- Fonts licensed through the vendor rather than installed locally
- File formats your clients or printers require
- Automation: scripts, drop zones, watched folders, export presets
· 6 steps
2. Map each job to its Craft counterpart
| Job | Craft app | Biggest thing to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Raster retouching | PhotoCraft | PSD layer and smart-object fidelity on your own files |
| Vector illustration | VectorCraft | SVG/PDF round-trip and text-on-path behaviour |
| RAW catalogue | LightCraft | Your camera's RAW profile, plus non-destructive edit history |
| Timeline editing | FilmCraft | Codec coverage for the cameras you actually shoot on |
| Motion graphics | EffectCraft | Your AE expressions must be rebuilt, not converted |
| Page layout | DesignCraft | PDF/X output accepted by your print supplier |
| PDF editing | PdfCraft | Redaction and form behaviour on real documents |
3. Run a shadow project, not a big-bang switch
Pick one low-stakes job with a deadline you control. Deliver it from the Craft app, and keep the incumbent installed until the delivery is accepted. Three clean shadow projects is a reasonable threshold for committing; one enthusiastic weekend is not.
4. Test file exchange from the receiving end
The failure mode in mixed shops is not that your file will not open, it is that it opens slightly wrong for someone else. Send your export to a collaborator still on the incumbent and ask them to look for: shifted text, missing fields, colour drift, flattened transparency, and reflowed pagination.
5. Move the automation, or accept the manual cost
Plug-in and script ecosystems are where the Craft suite is thinnest. If you have forty actions and a watched-folder pipeline, either rebuild them against the app's own scripting surface and CLI where one exists — every Craft release carries a command-line build, and PdfCraft's ships for Linux as well as macOS — or keep the subscription for that one workflow. Half-automated pipelines are worse than fully manual ones, because they fail silently.
6. Keep licences and source in your own records
Download the licence text and a copy of the release you depend on, and note the version and its SHA-256 in your project records. Apache-2.0 means you are allowed to do this; doing it means a removed release or a renamed repository never strands a deliverable.