Let’s face it Adobe rules the print and photographic marketplace and will for time to come. For most people though there isn’t the need for one of these professional level pieces of software..
Adobe® Photoshop® History
I started using Adobe® products back in the early 90s with the advent of Photoshop® 2.5 for Windows.
Photoshop® has steadily increased in functionality through today’s CS5 interface..
History of Image Processing
ImageFX: the first photo manipulation tool that was completely WYSIWYG
Before this I used a product called ImageFX on the Amiga platform which unbelievably is still out there and quite active today. I was already used to super-powered graphics software even before the advent of Adobe’s Photoshop.
Free Alternatives
If you don’t have money to invest in software might I suggest the following alternatives..
Paint.NET
It features all the basic features you’d ever want in paint and photo editing software such as layers, plug-ins, and import and export to many formats (including native Adobe Photoshop PSD format) via plug-in.. For most of the editing work I do today I find myself in this software program more than I do in Adobe Photoshop.. Why you ask ? Well I can just get things done very fast. Best of all it’s free.
According to the http://getpaint.net website:
“It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP."
Download it today
Plug-ins and Filters
If you require Photoshop Import and Export you can download the add-in for PSD support on CodePlex.com by http://www.taoyue.com/
Filters
Filters can be found on their maintained support page so if you need to do something you are missing in terms of image manipulation, here’s where to find it.
http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/forum/7-plugins-publishing-only/
Apple Alternatives
There are times when I am on the Apple Macintosh platform and I need a quick tool as well..
Seashore
Seashore has all of the features you would expect from a great paint/photo editing tool and is based on the Open Source Gimp Editor, but has a nicer’ Apple Mac OS X style of interface.
Download Today
Adobe® Illustrator® History
Adobe® Illustrator® was the original innovative vector graphic design tool for folks doing vector or line oriented graphics design versus working with square pixels (picture elements) in a bitmap editing tool like Adobe® Photoshop®.
Today’s version CS5.x has a very streamlined interface and UI..
What can you do if you can’t afford illustrator but need decent vector graphics capabilities ?
Check out Inkscape…
About Inkscape
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It also features a XAML export option..
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
Download Today