Greg Wallis - Filed under 'Xara'

Can professionals use Open Source applications and live with them?

It's a question that I've asked myself many times over the past few years and up till now, I would have said no, it's going to spoil your workflow, take twice as long, and cause enormous stress. But now maybe things are a little different.

In this particular post, I'm going to have a very quick look at things from a design/photo angle and check out The Gimp and Inkscape, which are respectively the top open source image editing and vector apps available. They're both cross platform and are now reaching a state of maturity, in that they don't crash like they used to, their specifications are surprisingly on a par with commercial software, and (here's the real beauty) they're both absolutely free. And free is unquestionably the finest four letter word known to mankind.

The Gimp, now at version 2.7, is a fully fledged bitmap editor that's in many ways comparable to Adobe's Photoshop, at least for 95% of the tasks asked of it. Just a few years ago this piece of software would crash every few minutes and was frankly unusable. However, today it's a different cup of tea and this is now a stable application that can be relied on and also (once you get to grips with its slightly quirky interface) great to use as a serious photo tool. 16 bit editing? yes, now it supports that, too. An enormous amount of effects' filters, with plenty available from third party developers (again, free) transform this into a bit of a powerhouse. It's a little slow with regards to processing, but now warrants the attention of professional users. If you haven't tried 2.7, it's worth taking a good long look, as this could save you the ridiculous upgrade prices that Adobe wants to charge you.

And what about vector illustration? Macromedia's Freehand bit the dust (and good riddance, it was awful) which leads us pretty much with the other industry standard, Adobe's Illustrator (though take a good look at Xara if you want a much cheaper but blindingly fast commercial alternative). Whilst no one can deny Illustrator is first class, it's hideously expensive (just like Photoshop) and is proprietory software. Waiting in the wings is Inkscape, the open source vector illustration app that has now reached 0.47 and has a surprising amount of cool features, is now pretty quick, and is gathering a large and loyal following.

Now there was never any intention of giving a detailed review of these products (maybe in the future) but there are a few screenshots in the gallery with this post that you can have a look at. More to the point, in a real life situation, could a professional web designer/photographer etc. move over to using these open source applications for day-to-day work? The answer, I think, is quite possibly. They're not perfect but provided your demands are pretty much mainstream then there's a fair chance that it can be done. Over the next few weeks I shall be testing them rigorously in a serious effort to ascertain whether the dream lives up to the reality, and I'll post again once I've reached a conclusion based on empirical evaluation. Now if only there were an open source option for Sony Vegas, Premiere, or Final Cut Pro...