The Open Source Graphics Trio - Art in the Free World

Everyone loves art, and whether they just like to touch up photographs or they make a living producing extravagant artwork, nobody likes to pay high prices for the software they need. What if there were free products that could get the job done?

Professional artists and hobbyists alike will recognize the major names in commercial graphics manipulation, including Adobe's line of products and Apple's graphics-centric Mac OS platform. Of course, they would also be familiar with the triple-digit and larger price tags that those products carry. What they might not realize is that they can achieve the same results as those products can provide using entirely free software.

We will cover three software packages that, when combined, can fulfill almost every graphics manipulation requirement. We'll also touch on some other tools that might be useful for achieving high-end results.

The first package to cover is often recognized by computer-savvy artists. It is called GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program. With many similarities to Adobe's Photoshop, GIMP is a powerful tool for raster graphics, and some vector graphics, operations. It can stand alone to produce free-form 2-dimensional artwork. It has all of the features one would expect, including a host of effects filters. It can also be used to put the finishing touches on images produced using the other tools we will discuss.

The second package is Inkscape. Specifically made for vector graphics, this tool is a great way to start even more complex 2-dimensional artwork. This is the easiest way to start with shapes and gradients, and scalable vector graphics avoid some of the quality issues that can plague raster graphics. Scalable vector graphics can be sized and distorted as needed without a loss in quality. Once an image has been started with Inkscape, GIMP can import the scalable vector graphics to be finished as part of a raster image.