Posted 18 June 2007, by Aaron
So, you wanna be a designer, huh? Well, first things first - go out and spend a few grand on a Mac Pro, then splash another couple of grand on Adobe CS3. Once you’re set up, then you can start thinking about being a designer.
Unfortunately, we don’t all have endless reserves of cash to spend on powerful computers and industry leading software. An alternative solution can be to acquire pirated software. But you know that every time legitimate software is copied a puppy gets run over, right? A more morally sound solution can be to delve into the geeky waters of open source software.
The open source movement is a community of dedicated geeks and nerds who develop alternative versions of commercial software, with all the features, bells and whistles, and distribute it for free (or donations). Personally, I’m a firm believer in you get what you pay for, but when you’re not paying anything you can’t really lose. So lets take a closer look at some open source design software.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program (The GIMP)
The GIMP is one of the most famous open source applications, and is considered by many as the open source alternative to Photoshop.
The down side is that the GIMP is pretty ugly - functional more than glossy - and the user interface isn’t the most intuitive. But if you can get over the bad looks, you’ll find a great personality. It offers many of the features and tools of Photoshop and can certainly hold up its own as a decent alternative.
The GIMP is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the GIMP website.
Gimpshop
Gimpshop is based on the GIMP application, but replicates as far as it can the feel of Photoshop by replacing the user interface. As the GIMP doesn’t have all the features of Photoshop it is not an exact like for like, but if you are comfortable with Photoshop but scared by the look of the GIMP, Gimpshop might be worth a try.
Gimpshop is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Gimpshop website.
Pixelmator
Edit: As Arpit Jacob correctly points out below, Pixelmator is not actually open source. It will retail at $59 (US). I have kept the listing here as it is still in interesting option for designers on a budget.
Pixelmator is currently in development but due for release later this year. It’s a Mac only affair, but worthy of mention because the preview screenshots look stunning. It promises many of the features of Photoshop and it looks very similar indeed. As it’s not been released yet, I can’t comment how it compares, but because I know designers are a superficial bunch who love good looks above all else, I know this will cause a stir when it’s released.
Pixelmator will be available for the Mac later this year. Further details are available from the Pixelmator website.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator. Currently many of Inkscape’s functions are operated with keyboard shortcuts rather than contextual mouse-operated menus. This is great if you can learn all the functions but for a newcomer it’s a steep learning curve. Inkscape still lacks a few features that a professional designer might need, especially when preparing artwork for print. However, Inkscape is still at version 0.46 - it is very much a work in progress and is showing a lot of promise.
Inkscape is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Inkscape website.
Scribus
Scribus is an award winning open source desktop publishing platform, similar to Adobe InDesign and Quark. It is a very complete and impressive application, boasting many of the features needed in a professional printing capacity. Like all of the applications listed here, it is a work in progress, and there is a steep learning process for anyone used to its commercial alternative. That said, Scribus is one of the most polished of these applications, and is certainly worth investigating.
Scribus is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Scribus website.
Conclusions: Made by geeks for geeks
Once thing that is apparent when using all of the applications here, is that a certain mindset is required to get to grips with them. If you’ve ever run your own web server off a Linux box just for fun, you’ll love these applications and find them a joy to use. Most creative designers I’ve come across aren’t always the most technically astute types, and the learning curve these programs present may prove too big a turn off.
However, underneath the quirky geeky interface, these applications boast some real power and are developed by incredibly passionate and supportive communities. Given that they are offered free of charge, these applications have to be be admired. I’m not sure professional studios will be cancelling their CS3 licenses just yet, but for the amateur or hobbyist these offer a great way in to design.
Does open source have a place in professional design?
This where I hand over to you. Have you ever tried any of the open source alternatives to our beloved Adobe applications? How did you find the experience and how do they compare with their commercial counterparts? Are these open source applications at a stage in their development where they are ready to be used in a professional capacity? If not, do you think they ever will be?
Many thanks for the recent comments: Asgeir, David, Johno, Charity and Psycho Dude.
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Tags:Adobe, Design, Open Source, Software
“(…) and the learning curve these programs present may prove too big a turn off”.
That’s what got me when I tried GIMP. 
It’s hard to break habits. “Wtf? Where’s the pen tool? Arrrarrrr, uninstall!”
Scribus looks pretty interesting, though. As I have little experience with desktop publishing applications, I might as well start on the open source end. Thanks.
Wow great list though Pixelmator is not opensource
Pricing & Availability
Pixelmator 1.0 will be available in late July for $59 (US). Full system requirements and more information on Pixelmator can be found at http://www.pixelmator.com
I’ve tried all the tools you mentioned, but none of them even come close to the likes of the Adobe suite in terms of GUI design or usability.
This isn’t brand snobbery. I’m a vocal supporter of the open-source movement, and use OS applications wherever I can. I just think that the developers have assumed a certain market (i.e. tech-aware geeks like me) and developed for that.
When I’m designing, the last thing I need to do is have to *think* about how my tools work - the software stuff almost needs to happen instinctivly for me, to allow my brain to focus on being creative! 
I think in terms of print design that we, as designers, have to cater for the commercial printer’s set preferences when it comes to filetype.
For instance, some printers I work with accept Quark or InDesign files, but don’t print from PDF, whereas others accept Quark and not InDesign, so I don’t think Scribus is a viable option.
That being said, I haven’t tried it myself and I value your opinion, so I’ll check it out.
Asgeir - Exactly the same happened to me with the GIMP. Good luck with Scribus, let me know what you think.
Arpit - Right you are buddy. I stand corrected and have updated the article. Thanks for pointing that out.
Paul - I agree completely. Like I said in the article, you need a certain mindset to wrap your head round open source stuff. I think in time the open source community will realise this is their biggest problem and will concentrate on developing for a broader audience.
David - You’re right, you need a printer who can work with hi-res PDFs for Scribus to be viable. That said I’ve noticed PDF becoming more of a standard these days. But am I right in thinking printers cant make last minute edits with PDFs?
It’s true that most top printers will accept high-res PDFs, but as far as I know if a last minute change is needed you’ll have to send over the amended PDF page rather than letting the printer correct a typo for instance.
Some printers have come back to me on occassion to say that printing from an InDesign or Quark file can give a better result that through PDF, but personally I just think they don’t have the most up-to-date or correct settings.
Thought I’d butt in, and quickly mention that PDF is as editable as the creator makes it. For example, if all the type in the document is retained as fonts (instead of being rendered as a bitmap or converted to curves) then it’s just as editable by the printer as an EPS, AI etc.
Where things go wrong is when the author of the document doesn’t set up the PDF output in the correct manner for print - resulting in bitmaps being rendered at the wrong DPI, or colour profiles not being kept, or fonts (and other scalable elements) not being kept as fully-editable. I’ve even seen designers render the whole page as a bitmap before exporting to PDF - resulting in a really crap final result!
The best way to think of PDF is to compare it to the Quark or InDesign formats. You can link in or embed bitmapped images, place fonts and vectors etc. The format then just remembers what each element of the page is. Adobe’s purchase of Macromedia has even resulted in the latest version being capable of embedding Flash!
Thanks for that, Paul. Explains things more clearly.
No problem! 
I think that PDF has been made *too* powerful for its own good to be honest! If it were simpler to use then it would have been adopted far more widely than it has…
Many people don’t reaslise that it’s an open format - developed by Adobe but not restricted like PSD or AI is.
Cheers for the info Paul. You’re right, if designers like David and I aren’t fully aware what PDF’s capabilities are, there’s a problem somewhere.
Either me and David are crap, or Adobe have failed in making things clear.
I didn’t realize PDF was fully editable like that. I’ll have to look into the settings more when exporting from InDesign!
And I agree with Paul’s comment earlier about the programs needing to be intuitive. Adobe has far more resources to spend improving their suite in that way. However, it wasn’t always intuitive for any of us; I tutored many students when I was still in college that refused to learn the keyboard shortcuts for things like the move tool or the pen tool. It really slows you down when you don’t know them by heart! Hehe, but if you asked me what the specific keys were to select those various tools, I wouldn’t be able to tell you!! My mind knows what I want and my fingers just hit the right buttons
You are right, Aaron, in saying that the learning curve is just too steep for us to be willing to put the time into it. We already have something we know, and it’s not like we have to upgrade CS every time a new version comes out (though I hear that CS3 is quite a breakthrough and it uses far less system resources than CS2). These programs would probably be great for those who have ideas and not the money to buy CS. I was always teased about using a PC throughout school (everyone used a Mac naturally), but it’s not about the program or the platform, it’s about the ideas. Who cares how you execute them? Well, your printer might…
Definitely the latter of the two!
CS3 totally kicks bottom over previous versions - for all applications in the suite!
You get what you pay for, pay nothing get “nothing”. I won’t say everything open source is bad, since it definitely isn’t the case. But it has it’s limits. In my opinion Scribus is the only option which truly stands a chance, simply due to the rather simplistic nature of publishing software compared to advanced graphics software and such.
For me personally though buy the Adobe suite isn’t worth the money either, I hardly make use of it even if I have a couple of the students versions of a couple of the applications that’s the max I’ll ever invest in Adobe material.
Perhaps a couple of years from now the open source alternatives would be on a higher level which would give it more use, but for not it simply lacks behind. It tends to keep walking in the shadows of the commercial products rather than taking the leap ahead and coming with a GUI which works just as well, features which are equal or better in quality to that of the commercial products, usability, etcetera.
And when taking a look at photoshop or GIMP in example… I must say I haven’t checked gimpshop, but GIMP seriously lacks on the GUI completely and due to that accessibility isn’t present at all, rendering most features completely useless if you don’t want to spend days on figuring out where you can find everything.
Making a long story short: Open source has the potential of becoming something great, but it’s definitely far from there yet.
It is interesting that no competitor of size has come to knock Photoshop off it’s Ivory Tower. It’s what gave Adobe their incredible strength in the design market. With Photoshop at the core of nearly every digital creative discipline, Adobe was able to establish the workspace look and feel. Bundling it all together as a suite was their final blow. I’d be interested to see if GIMP can make a real run at the Adobromedia empire. I’m actually surprised to see it’s still around.
Justin - To be honest, I can’t see the open source apps ever seriously competing with commercial. I think open source options are a good healthy addition to the market place but if anyone is ever going to compete with Adobe it will be another commercial suite.
I actually think the future of software is all internet delivered (like Google Docs), and I’ve seen a few random internet image manipulation applications already. The technology is currently a million miles off Photoshop but if you’re talking about competition this is where I think it will come from. Give it a few years.
Psycho Dude - only just spotted your message - apologies for not replying sooner. I agree wholeheartedly about open source walking in the shadows and never taking the lead. I guess thats what well paid R&D teams are paid to do, and that’s one thing commercial applications have which open source doesn’t.
I’m in agreement that many of the open source applications aren’t on the same level. Inkscape and even Scribus are no competition for Adobe’s offerings. On the other hand, I’ve used both Photoshop and the GIMP for years, and I think it’s largely a matter of taste: over time I’ve grown to prefer the GIMP for most tasks.
It’s not true, though, that open source can’t be much better than commercial stuff: most of the Internet was built on open source, and open source apps still run the Net–Perl, PHP, Apache, etc. and a lot of back-end stuff most people have no idea about.
What’s interesting is that until recently, the developers of open source software were geeks who only cared about the technical merits of their software, so user interfaces were horrible, and little effort went into anything that wasn’t extremely technical. But in the last few years there’s been a lot of work going into the user interface side, and more open source multimedia/graphic applications. In the next few years I’m sure we’ll see much stronger offerings from the open source front in those areas.
You left out one pretty important open source platform - Joomla! Huge world-wide developer community, CMS website platform, over 2700 extensions, most free, some commercial, terrific support forums. I’m a big fan.
Thoughts?
I’m just getting into web design. I’m originally a fine artist. I’ve only used Gimp and Inkscape for the graphics and images on the few sites I’ve made.
I started off using Gimp because the Adobe Suite was so prohibitive in price. Now, I’m kind of like a rebel and want to use open source solely.
I find Inkscape .46 is absolutely amazing and the new blur function is an awesome addition. I mock up my sites in Gimp, create graphics and icons in Inkscape. I’m using these apps on a Mac running Leopard. Using the X11 environment.
For those who found the interfaces confusing, there are indeph manuals under “help” with tutorials and the like. It’ll take several hours to read through, but hey, 3 hours or 1000 + bucks?
here are a few sites:
spencerthegardener(dot)com
potomitan(dot)net
paigewilsonarts(dot)com
Of course, I’d still have to use adobe Flash (once I learn it adequately). Would be nice to have an open source version of that!
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Asgeir Hoem
19 June 2007, 3:04 am