Free Creative Suite CS3 Alternatives
There are so many free open-source applications out there that can save money for new designers and even allow designers who work in one medium to explore other mediums as well.Here’s a list of everything I could think of.
Free Illustration & Vector Art Applications
Free Photo Image Editing Software
Free Illustration, Animation, and Authoring Tools
Free Desktop Publishing Applications
Free Adobe Acrobat Alternative
Free Illustration & Vector Art Applications
Inkscape - Product Page - Download Site
A free illustration and vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. Featuring transparency, gradients, node editing, pattern fills, PNG export, and more.
InsightPoint - Product Page
InsightPoint creates sophisticated illustration and layout for Web and print. When it comes to spell out and share your ideas, in text and in graphics as well, InsightPoint is the fastest and easiest way to get you there. Built on top of XML technologies, comprehensive object-oriented vector design tools, trivial learning curve, and smooth drawing experience. Besides popular bitmap outputs, InsightPoint can also create high-quality, Web-deployable multipage slide shows in the compact, sharp SVG format. Version 3.2.5.2 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
Karbon 14 - Product Page
Karbon is a vector-based drawing application for KOffice. It allows artists to create complex drawings without losing image quality when zooming in on, or resizing the drawing. You can use Karbon to add finishing touches to diagrams created using Kivio or charts created using KChart. Graphic design ideas can be quickly and easily transformed into high quality illustrations with Karbon.
SodiPodi - Product Page - Download
Sodipodi is a vector-based drawing program, like CorelDraw® or Adobe Illustrator® from the proprietary software world, and Sketch or Karbon14 from the free software world. It is free software, distributed under the terms of the Gnu General Public License, Version 2.
Skencil - Product Page
Skencil is a Free Software interactive vector drawing appliction. Known to run on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems, it is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes. A somewhat unique (for a drawing program) feature of Skencil is that it is implemented almost completely in a very high-level, interpreted language, Python. Python is powerful, object-oriented and yet easy to use.
SmoothDraw NX - Product Page
SmoothDraw NX is an easy yet powerful freehand drawing tool. It produces the most smooth and expressive stroke through your tablet. It also smoothes mouse input for who don’t have a tablet. A quantity of tools are provided for the tasks from basic drawing to image retouching.
SMN ParticleDraw - Product Page - Download Site
ParticleDraw is a novel windows drawing program powered by a state of the art general system simulation engine. The brushes are dynamic systems of particles with interesting behaviours, which you can completely customise. Each brush is intricately tuneable with many underlying physical parameters and one can construct arbitrary systems of particles and use these as brushes.
KolourPaint - Product Page
KolourPaint is a free, easy-to-use raster graphics editor for the K Desktop Environment. It aims to be conceptually simple to understand, providing a level of functionality targeted towards the average user. KolourPaint is designed for daily tasks such as: Painting - drawing diagrams and “finger painting” Image Manipulation - editing screenshots and photos; applying effects Icon Editing - drawing clipart and logos with transparency
The GIMP - Product Page - Download Site
GIMP is a freely distributed application to perform such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. File Formats: JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF and special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP’s format capabilities with plug-ins, including animations.
GIMPshop - Product Page - Download Site
Is GIMP but modified menu structure to more closely resemble Photoshop and adjusts the program’s terminology to match Adobe’s. “My original purpose for GIMPshop was to make the Gimp accessible to the many Adobe Photoshop users out there. I hope I’ve done that. And maybe along the way, I can convert a Photoshop pirate into a Gimp user.”
Krita - Product Page
Krita is a painting and image editing application for KOffice. Krita is part of KOffice since version 1.4. Krita contains both ease-of-use and fun features like guided painting (never before has it been so easy to airbrush a straight line!) and high-end features like support for 16 bit images, CMYK, L*a*b and even OpenEXR HDR images.
Free Photo Image Editing Software
Free Photoshop Alternatives
Paint.Net - Product Page - Download Site
Intuitive and innovative user interface that offers layers, unlimited history, special effects and an array creative tools found in similar programs like Adobe Photosho, including curve tool for drawing splines or Bezier curves, the gradient tool, the magic wand for selecting regions of similar color, and the Clone Stamp, a simple text editor, advanced zooming tools, and a Recolor tool.
Picasa - Product Page
Find the pictures you forgot you had. Picasa organizes your entire collection while you watch, scanning the images on your computer and automatically sorting them by date. Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you: Locate and organize all the photos on your computer. Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks. Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free. Move and re-name pictures from inside Picasa. Want to clean up messy folders and move pictures around on your computer’s hard drive? Simply drag and drop pictures from one folder in Picasa to another. Picasa will make the change permanent after double-checking with you. Want to change a picture’s filename from 671056398a.jpg to Lisa.jpg? In Picasa, it only takes seconds to re-name one picture or a group of pictures.
Pixia - Product Page
Pixia is the English version of a popular Japanese painting and retouch software for full color graphics. It supports mask, layer and many other editing functions. You can use your own customized brush tips and even use an image file as a brush tip to create unique effects. Its user-friendly interface is suitable for beginners as well as experts. Pixia supports the most common editing techniques and presents a user friendly interface.
OpenOffice Draw - Product Page - Download
DRAW - from a quick sketch to a complex plan, DRAW gives you the tools to communicate with graphics and diagrams. ‘Park’ your most commonly used drawing tools around your screen ready for single-click access. Use Styles and Formatting to put all your graphics styles at your finger tips. Manipulate objects, rotate in two or three dimensions; the 3D controller puts spheres, rings, cubes, etc. at your disposal. Arrange objects: group, ungroup, regroup, and edit objects while grouped. Sophisticated rendering let you create photorealistic images with your own texture, lighting effects, transparency, perspective, and so on. Smart connectors make short work of flowcharts, organisation charts, network diagrams, etc. Define your own ‘glue points’ for connectors to ’stick’ to. Dimension lines automatically calculate and display linear dimensions as you draw. Use the picture Gallery for clipart; create your own art and add it to the Gallery. Save your graphics in OpenDocument format, the new international standard for office documents. This XML based format means you’re not tied in to DRAW. You can access your graphics from any OpenDocument compliant software. Import graphics from all common formats (including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF). Use DRAW’s free ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of your work.
Serif PhotoPlus - Product Page
With PhotoPlus, you can easily adjust brightness and contrast, colour balance, remove red-eye and make numerous other image editing adjustments and enhancements, achieving fantastic results time after time. And best of all, you can Download Site the standard digital photo editor, PhotoPlus 6 for free.
Free Illustration, Animation, and Authoring Tools
Serif DrawPlus - Product Page - Download Site
DrawPlus is the amazing drawing and graphics software that enables you to create stunning vector graphics, family trees, room layouts and even web animations. With DrawPlus you can create outstanding vector drawings, high-impact graphics and eye-catching animations - no experience required! And best of all, you can Download the standard drawing and graphics software, DrawPlus 4, completely free! Animation Mode Bring your designs to life with the fun animation tools, which include easy-to-use, yet advanced features like onion skinning, backgrounds, overlays and frame management.
Project Dogwaffle - Product Page - Download Site
Free Painting and Animation Software for PC by Dan Ritchie for people who love to Draw, Sketch, Animate and Paint, but without the costly mess, the occasional spills or the funny fumes.
Free Desktop Publishing Applications
Free Indesign Alternatives
Scribus - Product Overview - Download Site
Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Free Flash and Animation
TouchArt Sampler - Product Site
TouchArt Sampler is a great way to learn the art and skills of performing live visuals and VJing. TouchPlayer and 21 interactive 2D and 3D animations (synths) are included in this sampler. Touch lets you manipulate visuals in real-time, giving you control of various parameters like lighting, color, textures, motion, video playback, and composing. Play some audio and you can sync visuals to the BPM.
Synfig Studio - Product Page - Download Site
Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the 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.
Flash SlideShow Maker Professional - Product Page - Download Site
Free Flash Photo Album
Flash Slideshow Maker is a Flash album creator to make animated photo slide show with SWF file as the output format. It transforms your digital photo collection to Macromedia Flash file format ( SWF ) which you can share your memorial moments with your family or friends on your own homepage, post on your Blog or upload to your own website. Flash Slideshow Maker is the ideal tool for create slide show widget for your website quickly and easily.
LiveSwif Lite - Download
LiveSwif Lite 2 is a free Flash maker that lets you create Flash movies, buttons, or banners quickly and easily. It provides several classic vector-drawing tools, including Freehand, Curve, Shape, Spline, Contour, and an in-place text editor. LiveSwif is a typical, keyframe-based animation system. Based on the capability of drawing tools, it provides a path-motion and transform-motion tool. In setting a new position, angle, size, or color in keyframes, LiveSwif will blend the in-between frames automatically. The setup package contains 500 library components.
Sothink SWF - Product Page
Sothink SWF Catcher for IE is a free and useful extension to Internet Explorer that enables you to save multiple Flash based charts, presentations, e-cards, games and Flash movies at the same time. The small size allows embedding into IE by just adding a new button. With only a few clicks you can store all your favorite Flashes easily.
Free Adobe Acrobat Alternative
CutePDF Writer - Product Overview - Download Site
Create professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document. FREE for personal and commercial use! No watermarks! No popup Web advertisements! Now supports 64-bit Windows.
Xpdf - Product Overview - Download
Xpdf is an open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. (These are also sometimes also called ‘Acrobat’ files, from the name of Adobe’s PDF software.) The Xpdf project also includes a PDF text extractor, PDF-to-PostScript converter, and various other utilities.
Free Font Managers
The Font Thing - Overview - Download
The Font Thing is a freeware program for managing TrueType fonts in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0.
Font Frenzy - Product Information
FontFrenzy™ tames the frenzy of fonts that can clutter and slow down Windows XP. The DeFrenzy function removes and stores all fonts except those that were present when Windows was first installed. In short, it cleans up your font folder so that Windows boots quicker and runs smoother.
AMP Font Viewer - Product Information
This program is an easy to use but powerful font manager, which allows getting a quick overview of both installed and non installed fonts. It can install and uninstall fonts, and organize them in categories.
Free Office Applications
OpenOffice Draw - Product Page - Download
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute KCDLabel Product Page
KCDLabel is a program to create labels, covers, and booklets for CD cases. It can include text, bitmapped images, and directory content recursively read from a directory. KCDlabel can print and output postscript files. It can also create round labels to stick on CDs. KCDLabel can access CDDB to retrieve information about a CD.
