Alternatives to Adobe Suite CS5

Adobe has announced a new CS5 version of their Creative Suite. Even though educators can get a hefty discount for these applications, there is still a cost. Not only is there a cost, but like so many software programs, the Adobe suite products have become more sophisticated, which is good for professionals, but not helpful for individuals just wanting to complete a simple task. Some of the alternatives suggested below may be more complex (GIMP and Synfig as examples), but the rest offer a much easier path to accomplishing your goals in developing a website or publishing a newsletter than the Adobe CS5 programs. And, more importantly, they are FREE!

The idea behind Photoshop is to manipulate images and improvephotographs, a free alternative is GIMP. This application is about as difficult to master as Photoshop, but it has many of the Photoshop features. If you are simply looking to make some small improvements to a photo, youmay want to consider picnik or splashup(bothfree), but if you want some of the power found in Photoshop, you should look at GIMP.

A graphics editor that’s free and similar to Illustrator andCorelDraw is Inkscape. This application comes with several tutorials to help you learn how to use it, and a wiki where you can share ideas and learn from others. This program is Open Source and provides a well defined menu where you can easily find information about using Inkscape and locate free clip art.

“Synfig is,” in their words, “a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based open-source 2D animation software package, designed fromthe ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources. While there are many other programs currently on the market to aid with the efficient production of 2D animation, we are currently unaware of any other software that can do what our software can.” It offers a free alternative to Adobe Flash but does not have all the features of Flash, especially the ability to move objects from Illustrator or Photoshop into Flash. It does do a very nice job with animation, and of course, the price is right—it’s free.

>A free, Open Source alternative to Dreamweaver is Nvu webauthoring software. They also offer hosting for a reasonable amount ($4.99/month). This program is a WYSIWYG that complies with W3C’s web standards so you know that your site will comply with their guidelines. This program is easy to use and will help you quickly develop a webpage.

For users of InDesign, or QuarkXpress, there is Scribus. This is a free, Open Source application available for both Mac and PCplatforms. Even though there appears to be no toolbars or palettes they are switched on from the Windows menu. TrustedReviews gives this application high marks (http://bit.ly/9Dnv4r).

Even though I prefer using the Adobe Suite, and now face learning the new elements in CS5, I share these applications that are free and somewhat easier to learn and use. I’m sure that there may be other equally useful programs in the Web 2.0 cloud. Please share them if you like.

Have a Picnic with Picnik

Previously I have mentioned Adobe's Photoshop Express and Google's Picasa for photo editing. One problem with Picasa is that you need to download the software to your computer and it seems to take over all you digital images. I found this frustrating since I also use Photoshop CS4 for editing and didn't want the Picasa logo on my images. Flickr, a Yahoo application, does not require any download (by the way, neither does Adobe's Photoshop Express) and does a nice job in photo editing. But recently I discovered an application I like better than these three and there is no download required and, like the others, it's a FREE registration. Yea!

 

This application for photo editing that I recently discovered, and really like, is 

Picnik (http://www.picnik.com/). This application will allow you to do the usual editing things like crop, rotate, resize, make color corrections and remove red-eye. But it will also let you do a lot more. For example you can add effects to your photos. Like adding vibrance, vignettes, mattes and making color changes. You can also turn your image into a pencil sketch, increase film grain and posterize them. You can add stickers, text and frames. All these are done with easy clicks of your mouse.

 

Above is an an image I edited with a few mouse clicks using Picnik. The results can be seen in the image below. As you can see, its been cropped, text added and it has been sharpened and posterized and had a frame added. Give it a try--after all it's free, what do you have to lose?