Creative Alternatives and Resources

I get asked quite a bit from new designers and programmers I work with where I find cool stuff on the web. Things like alternative programs to Adobe CS3 and some of the xhtml/css coding resources I use. So I’ve gone through my various bookmarks on both my Mac and PC and created the list below. I should have done this a long time ago. Anyway enjoy!

Photoshop

Gimp is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software for computers that run Windows.
Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching, graphics manipulating and animation program available for many operating systems.
PaintShop Pro You can do it all with Paint Shop Pro! Photography, graphics, art, and productivity all in one easy-to-use, affordable program!

Illustrator

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

InDesign

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

Web Design

Programmers NotePad the free, open source, text editor with special features for coders.
Kompozer is a wysiwyg HTML editor (Nvu/Composer fork) aimed towards advanced users.
Notepad ++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.
Coda is “one window web development” for Mac
Stylemaster From beginner to expert, Style Master will make working with CSS more efficient, more productive, and more enjoyable.
Quantas Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.
HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text file types.
tlbox the best tools on the web

Resources

4 Responses to “Creative Alternatives and Resources”

Thoughts on Design » Design Software Alternatives

June 7th, 2007 at 7:32 am

[…] Before I had the opportunity to look this up, I found that someone else had saved me the trouble. Creative Alternatives and Resources It’s a fairly comprehensive list of what’s available for the designer on a […]
Dino

June 17th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

I think you forgot about Notepad ++. It’s what I use for writing PHP, HTML and CSS codes. Best of all, it’s free. Nice list by the way! Thanks!
Todd Austin

June 19th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Almost forgot about Notepad++. I generally like Programmers Notepad better, but I know a lot of people who use Notepadd++. I added it to the list. Thanks Dino. 🙂
Dino

July 1st, 2007 at 12:38 am

A million thanks too for listing great resource sites and apps. It saved me a lot of time looking for those in Google.

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