Free Software for Digital Design

Anyone wanting to set up for digital design could expect to pay a small fortune for software. Some people try to get around the cost by acquiring pirated versions of commercial software. This is illegal and unethical for anyone who wants to earn a living from digital content themselves. Fortunately there are a number of excellent programs available free of charge which can meet many of the needs of digital designers. In this article I'll take a look at some essential free tools.

Google Picasa

Google is best known for search engine. Picasa is a piece of software that Google purchased from a third party that lets you easily organise your digital photos and video clips. Of course being a Google product, Picasa offers extensive search capabilities - although this depends to some extent on you taking the time to classify your digital media collection. It also offers some basic touch-ups and backup facilities, and can import photos from most types of digital camera, so it's a pretty useful tool to have. There is a variety of other similar software available, some free, some commercial, some bundled with various makes of digital camera. What is great about Picasa is that it is free, and it does what it was designed to do well.

The Gimp

This piece of software with a funny sounding name, and a funny looking mascot is a must have for anyone wanting to do serious bitmap image editing without spending a fortune. Originally designed for Linux, which explains a few quirks about the user interface, The Gimp is nevertheless a powerful image editing suite. The Windows version generally matches the latest Linux version in terms of features, and is a very good cheap substitute for Adobe Photoshop. 

Scribus

Scribus is a desktop publishing program along the lines of programs like Microsoft Publisher or Adobe Pagemaker. Scribus fits more at the professional end of the scale, with the ability to output extremely high quality pdf files suitable for sending to printers. 

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