Don’t /ignore free alternatives to photoshop
When I started this blog, I had the big problem to produce some little graphic adjustment without having the tool (and the skill, ofc 
). So the first idea was: Photoshop.
But as often, the first idea isn’t the smartest one.
Why?
Because Photoshop is an amazing tool for image editing, but it is oriented to:
- Professional photographers
- Serious amateur photographers
- Graphic designers
- Web designers
(as the official site states) 
And I am none of them. Moreover, the licence costs 699$.
So what? Paintshop Pro?
Same story, even if the price is lower.
The price is only 69$, but again it is beyond my needs! Those two products are damn good for editing, but I don’t want to spend money at all for that.
I’m an amateur, and the need I have is really 1% of those products. And moreover, what if I have to draw something, instead of edit an existing picture? I have to spend money for Illustrator, and again: too much for what I really need.
Alternatives? Pirates, bittorrent, eMule and peer to peer in general are a big nonono.
Why? Illegal and unfair. Just because I don’t want to spend money ’cause I can’t find what I need, doesn’t mean I have rights to steal products like that. So just put those alternatives on /ignore.
The real Alternative I found is coming from the opensource world. A friend of mine, Artikid, suggested me to try and check the following products:
The first one, Gimp, is the open source answer to Photoshop. It has many, many usefull features. You can find the full information here.
What I like most are:
- Can read all the photoshop format and support many formats
- Digital Retouching
- Supported Platforms
On the last point, the achievment is more interesting since the product is distributed for the following platforms:
- GNU/Linux (i386, PPC)
- Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista)
- Mac OS X
- Sun OpenSolaris
- FreeBSD
The second one, Inkscape, is a good starter for vector design. You don’t need Illustrator, if you need to draw simple things. 
Quote from official site:
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.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.
They don’t lie. It has capability similar to Illustrator and the rest.
If you take a look to this blog, the animated gif in the upper left corner has been made in few minutes using Inkscape and Gimp. Same story for two of the banners in the header: in few minutes and using Gimp. Same story for the picture I used and watermarked for the post I should I have been legend.
So my conclusion is that those products are really simple to use, and they are fully documented online. Even if you think the editing work I did on this blog is crap, take in account I have absolutely no skill.
A final consideration. If you can’t stand big corporates, there are many ways to fight them, if you have this kind of attitude.
The looser way, is to steal and crack their products.
The winner way is to use alternatives.
