digg

Do they show you how to roll your own career too? Because you'll also need to do that if you're going to avoid industry standard softwares.

append to summary: "... that runs on Windows."

"They see me rollin', my creative suite. An tryin' to catch me shoppin' for free."

"Roll your own"? Way to lend credibility.

"Roll your own"

Watch wax nostalgic for 2003

There is an ad for CS3 on the side of the page, thats funny to me.

@tehjarvis

"Wow. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. It's FREE."

So is a bullet in the head.... just because its free doesn't mean its a good idea.

next i want to hear how Blender is so much better than maya!

This is Good for the casual developer and people who have no real need for photoshop (Holiday Photo Cleanup) and decide to pirate it.
GIMP and the like are good programs, but unfortunatly are not an Industry Standard or Replacement, Unless certain proprietary technologies are available via legal paid licence plugins, there is no real scope for GIMP in the true Print Industry.
But yes, most people who pirate do not need to be using the software and they are the ones for whom this would be good.
(The space you save on the Program files can be used for the movies you get of the net)

This, or you know... TPB.org.

Free software as a replacement for costlier ones is a great move, but the GIMP really isn't a Firefox. There is a reason why Adobe's programs are industry standards - they have quality.

I have pirated software, like adobe premiere pro, maya, and photoshop, but I'm still in college. But right before I graduate I plan on buying photoshop and maya at the student rates so I have real copies of them. I mean, I'm still in college. I can't pay for the real stuff yet. But I will.

I don't think this article is aimed at professional graphic designers. For the rest of us who need to do image editing for about 20% of their day, and can't justify the expense for Photoshop, opensource solutions are a god-send.

I'd like to be able to buy CS3, but I simply am unable to afford it. They give rise to their own problems - if they didn't charge as much, most people would just buy it, and not bother to pirate it.

What about Eclipse? That's a top notch development environment which rivals Dreamweaver and is open source

I think most of this software is okay for everyday use, but if you really want to produce a song then Audacity just doesn't cut it. The GIMP, on the other hand, is great for most jobs.

Lots of criticism from Diggers, and not enough foresight. Yes, we know the "industry" expects familiarity with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, other-expensive-product, and we know that two or three decent contracts will also pay for these products, too. But after 20 years in the industry, and other than Flash, I've not happened across a project that couldn't be managed and presented on time with F/OSS software.

Perhaps out of the 30 people I regularly communicate with in the design - particularly web design - industry, 7 of them successfully use F/OSS - and only F/OSS - in their career. Five of them will probably comment on this particular article. What would they say about the design industry as a whole? They'd say, "Myopic to the core - it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it."

Kudos to the article's author - perhaps it'll inspire fresh talent to join our expensive ranks.

I'm all for free software, I'm all for linux, but.... Learning software is hard getting proficient at software is harder.
The standard for graphics is Photoshop, legal or not I dont care how you get it just cut to the chase and get
photoshop and don't bother with this "free" software.

Photoshop or forget it.
Worth ever penny; however, I wish it was cheaper.

Yes, Adobe software can be expensive, but I think it is worth every penny. And you do not necessarily have to buy full versions. I am a student, I purchased the educational version of CS2 for about $400 which is a lot less than the $1,000+ for the retail. But the best thing is, I was able to buy the commercial upgrade for CS3 for $500 and didn't have to purchase the $1,500 retail version. So if you are a student the best path is to buy the educational version for one generation and for the next generation buy the commercial upgrade. Yes, this is still a lot of money but if you look at what you get its not that bad. I purchased the Web Design Premium package which comes with Acrobat 8, Flash, Dreamwever, Contribute, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Bridge. In my opinion that is a lot of great software for the money.

Yet again, THEY'RE IN MY PHOTOSHOPZ TRYING TO REPLACE EVERYTHING WITH OSS.
That software is nice, but it can't substitute Adobe's Creative Suite.

If you're not doing CMYK/print graphics, Gimp and Inkscape are perfectly usable. If you're doing web graphics or user interfaces (icons, wallpapers, etc.) you don't need Photoshop.

I think most of you are missing the point. No one actually stating this is better than Creative Suite, on the contrary; creative suite works so well because its integrated, like Microsoft Office. What this article IS saying is that there is a great alternative out there if youre not using these application professionally. (hence the reason they want feedback from professionals in the industry). For your purpose of enhancing an image using Adobe® Photoshop® software, these are great alternatives, and lets face it, not everyone that steals photoshop will be a graphic designer.

And YES YOU CAN LEARN Adobe® Photoshop® by using GIMP or Paint.net (I HIGHLY recommend Paint.net over GIMP). You can learn the basics such as cropping and layers by using these programs, and once you get the hang of it, the advance stuff can easily be picked up later on when you actually do have a reason to purchase Adobe® Creative Suite® 3.

I'd like to see a similar collection for the mac

Not a lot of choice.

I have no problem dropping $1500 on CS3. But I don't own a Mac, and I won't use Windows. The best tools in the world are useless to me.

The fact is until Adobe decides to support Linux, these are the only tools a lot of us have to work with.

Paint.net shouldn't even be on this list IMHO. It only works under Windows systems, and is there for irrelevant.

Audacity has been a work horse for me going on 3 years now. I really don't know why some one would need another audio program.

Jahashaka is a very promising video editing application, but at the moment it completely lacks the ability to handle HD file formats.
I've looked into both versions of Cinelerra, but apparently no one is using it with a Panasonic AG-HVX-200 with it. That does not bode well, since that's the hottest indy camera out there.

Inkscape is coming along nicely. Still lacks the advanced layer features of Illustrator, but it is usable for vector art.

I haven't used Scribus or Synfig yet.

We have a long way to go, and what's really stopping us a lack of unity.

We need to take the code of these apps, and form a unified suite in the same manner OpenOffice has.

It doesn't need to be a clone of CS3, but the same tools should work the same way in every application.

THIS is what is holding the Linux Desktop back. Not 3D swirlly cubes and rubber windows but actual applications that let us get stuff done.

With the exception of Paint.net every one of these project was Open Source and cross platform. The tools are growing and if the community continues to make them available to all platforms like this as it unifies them, one day we can break the strangle hold Adobe has just like M$ hold over Office and OS is being broken now.

Maybe Adobe will wise up and develop for Linux before they suffer the same fate as the boys from Redmond.

Just go to the pirate bay.