Open-Source Alternatives

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What open-source options are out there for doing Graphic Design, Graphic Illustration, Web-Design, and Photo Manipulation?

I used to have a copy of Photoshop 6 on an old Windows computer, but it is now in storage. More so, since I have been unemployed for a few years, spending $$$ on any software is out of the question!!!

My only computer now is a MacBook.

I think that Gimp and Inkscape (?) are pretty popular, but I’m not sure what they are used for, or how they compare to Adobe and other proprietary packages?!

My current needs are for creating basic things like:

[INDENT]- Tabs

  • Button

  • Rounded Corners

  • Glass-like Buttons and Tabs

  • Background Slices

  • Gradients
    [/INDENT]
    and possibly…

  • Editing/Resizing Images

  • Creating Graphic Illustrations (e.g. Shopping Carts, Smileys, Banner Ads)

In addition to this, I would like to go with something that is fairly well-adopted and will be around for a long, long time.

There are lots of apps out there for “down and dirty” operations, but if no one else knows how to use those tools, they aren’t supported, or updated, and go out of existence, then you’ve just wasted an enormous amount of time for nothing!!!

(I have been really happy using established open-source apps like NetBeans, Audacity, FireFox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, MySQL Workbench, etc.)

By contrast, stuffing more of my $$$ in Corporate America’s For-Profit, Proprietary pockets is just not my scene anymore?! :nono:

Any suggestions to help me out with the “graphical” portions of my E-commerce site???

Sincerely,

TomTees

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Or you could buy either the cheap cut down version of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements. This along with many other packages over the years have been supplied with countless scanners, digital cameras and the like. I’d be looking for an old version of CS3 that someone doesn’t want/need anymore. It will work on an older mac just fine and it won’t cost much at all to buy. The commercial giants have been paid for it and you can get the best of both worlds without compromising your ethics.

As for open source my experience with GIMP has been that it has a higher degree of difficulty to learn but that it performs the functions well enough. I’ve not been back to it for a while so my experience will be out of date. I’m not a code lover so I have to have GUIs.

There are plenty of online editors that will do basic editing as you are implying you will use it for. Lifehacker Best Online Photo Editors (Hive Five)

The beauty of using mainstream products is that because of the high user base it is easy to find tutorials, shortcuts, brush packs, actions etc that can achieve common looks very quickly and easily. This isn’t always what people want to do but in a commercial environment where time=money short cuts add up over time.

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Those pirate copies are usually supplied with a few dozen viruses and trojans thrown in as a free bonus.

Therefore either free software such as GIMP or paying for a properly licenced copy of the paid software are both better alternatives.

Probably the best solution is to try various free/open source programs first to see if they do all what you need. If they do then use the one you prefer. If they don’t then research to see if you can find a paid program that has the extra functionality you need. Then you need to decide if that extra functionality is worth the price.

In the case of the pirated copies the viruses and trojans that it comes with make it the most expensive option of all.

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Just thought of something else. I have something I just downloaded (Image Magic?) that is only on my computer at home. It is a command line program for batch processing. I selected photos for a photo page, then entered a command and every photo was resized and renamed. The rename part was unexpected by me, but made my job much easier.

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There is also something called paint.net. If I recall visiting paint.net thanks the site provider and refers you to another site.

I use GIMP. I think it does most everything Photoshop will do, and there is even an interface you can download to make GIMP behave like Photoshop. I am not an expert, but I have followed some tutorials that let me turn a color photo to B&W and the make a single object have color.

I use GIMP to resize my images for the web, I crop and eliminate unwanted background. I have even repaired a photo (scanned photo of my mother that had cracks).

I suspect the experts here will have more information for you.

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Although some people will hack the programs and use them, the original question was how does open source compare with paid programs.

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People like you won’t have any problem in other countries where piracy is the norm. They do their graphics on Corel or Photoshop without the license, and they are earning big bucks from their work. Not that I am suggesting you do it, too… Just thinking out loud.