DIY Centre:

Free Software Options.

Open Source software is a great way to test the waters without spending thousands of dollars on commercial software.

The best available is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (Gimp or GNU imp). It has been around for a long time and is a suitable alternative to Photoshop if your images are for web usage only.

Two other good programs are Inkscape and Scribus. They are page layout and vector graphic drawing programs with most of the functionality of their expensive cousins, InDesign, QuarkXpress, Illustrator and Coral Draw. Beyond learning the tools of the trade they can be used to produce excellent graphics and pdf files for non-commercial printing or the internet.

In theory these three programs, when combined with Ghostscript (also open source), can produce print ready pdf files, however, from experience no commercial printers in the Melbourne area will accept these files even though they meet all the correct specification. Check with your local printshop and you may be better received.

However, they can produce suitable postscript files which can be processed by Adobe Acrobat Distiller and sent to printers. Your will still need Acrobat, which was about $650AUD in June 2009, but that’s still a lot cheaper than $4,000 for a print design package, not to mention the computer power needed to run the software.

Also, there are a few nonlinear video editors and DVD authoring programs available, but at last view they were still in the early stages of development and OS bundled software (iMovie) or that of the camera manufacturers was still a better option. Worth keeping an eye on, but Final Cut and Premier are still the leaders in the field.