Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Photoshop Alternatives

Quite a few sites that WESTAF has developed use a specific image standard developed to replace slides. The sites include:

ZAPP(tm)
CaFE(tm)
The Ohio Arts Council's Grant System

Several more are on the way. The standard requires that an image be perfectly square and each side needs to be 1920 pixels. Almost all images are rectangles so this requires masking the image on a 1920x1920 black canvas. The result is something like this:



OR



For the most part folks use Photoshop.

That said, one of the most common questions that we're asked is, "What else can I use!? I can't afford to buy Photoshop!"

Fortunately there are a couple of free alternatives that are very good. Neither is as intuitive as Photoshop.

The first option is GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP. This opensource software is pretty much as sophisticated as Photoshop. It works on PCs, Mac, and most flavours of UNIX. It is a little more involved to get it up and running than Photoshop. Still, it is an excellent piece of software and once you get used to the interface it is reckoned to be on par with Adobe's offerings.

The second option, only available for windows, is Paint.net. The reviews of the latest version are very positive. While I've not used it, I read that it will fulfill almost all needs that a user might have.

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