Shahid Online - Tech Corner

Oh yes, an update to an earlier post about getting hold of free or Open Source alternatives to Adobe Creative Suite. I actually forgot to mention about Adobe ImageReady, which gets bundled with Photoshop. There are a number of basic animation tools, but none provide flexibility similar to ImageReady. Fortunately, Open Source lovers are in for a surprise in the form of GIMP Animation Package . This link will take you to the Windows download site as I cannot find any references to this for the Mac OS. Chances are that it could be part of the Gimp.app download, but I haven't had time to inspect this. The Creative Suite package includes Adobe Bridge, which is a thumbnail viewer to convert images and open them up in any Adobe application for editing. No matter how they would try to trump up its name, it is still a thumbnail viewer. The best free application out there for this is IrfanView . Need I say more? Are there any pixel pushers out there, who prefer to simply draw their own pics?...

With the take over of Macromedia by Adobe, they have increased their arsenal of design packages, as well as the price. No-one can do pretty much without the popular package of Photoshop for their images, and Dreamweaver for websites, especially aspiring design students who do not have much money. Nevertheless, open source software has come to save the day. What is open source software? In a nutshell it is free software with its source-code freely available to those who would like to expand or improve on the software. To expand further, anyone who’s tinkered with the source code such as optimisation or additional functionality can resubmit it back to the holders and let others enjoy the fruits of your labour. I have trawled through the World Wide Web to find out how everyone can benefit from Open Source to build up their own studio and compete against Adobe Creative Suite. All this for free, apart from the cost of the Internet. I am planning to have a facility where you can purchase...