Inkscape is similar to tools like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. If you’re not familiar with the two, see this piece for a good breakdown of vector versus bitmap. GIMP is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and it now runs natively on OS X, without the need to install special X11 libraries.Īs GIMP is to bitmap editing, Inkscape is to editing vector graphics. It has a comprehensive user manual and a fair amount of help online. Whether you need to do some simple re-sizing, heavy retouching or creating images from scratch, GIMP is the tool of choice for working with bitmap images. GIMP has a rich set of filters and tools to manipulate photos for print or Web publishing. While it’s not quite as full-featured as Photoshop (and enthusiasts can explain in great detail where GIMP has shortcomings for high-end photo editing), GIMP offers just about everything that a small business owner would need for image retouching, editing and so on. It’s widely used by photography enthusiasts and open source enthusiasts who are looking for an alternative to Photoshop. The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is one of the oldest and most successful open source applications. Even though I’m a big fan of open source software, there are some jobs that require or at least benefit greatly from proprietary tools - though in skilled hands I’ve seen free and open source tools produce results that rival proprietary tools.īut if you’re not in the graphics business, you can save some cash and provide your staff with all the graphics tools they can eat by choosing open source software instead. If your business focuses entirely on graphics work of some kind (Web design, desktop publication, etc.) then you may want to invest in tools like Adobe Creative Suite. If you’d like to create professional work without breaking the bank, I’ve got five open source graphics apps that will get the job done. We’ve got five open source programs to get the job done.ĭo you want to create your own promotional materials for your small business? Before you shell out big bucks for Adobe Creative Suite or another set of proprietary graphics software tools, you should think about what open source software has to offer. You don’t have to spend a fortune on expensive, over-powered graphics software to create promotional materials for your small business.

Jpg to pdf creator open source