libregraphics

Blender
Gimp
Fontforge
Processing
Scribus
Inkcape
Arduino

An introduction to physical computing

Ten reasons open software is good for business:

1. Security.

Bugs in open source software tend to get fixed immediately.

2. Quality.

Open software is created by thousands of software developers, and therefore gets closest to what users want because those users can have a hand in making it.

3. Customizability.

Business users can take a piece of open source software and tweak it to suit their needs. Since the code is open, it's simply a matter of modifying it to add the functionality they want.

4. Freedom.

When businesses use open source software, they free themselves from the severe vendor 'lock-in'. They are at the mercy of the vendor's vision, requirements, dictates, prices, priorities and timetable, and that limits what they can do with the products they're paying for.

5. Flexibiliy.

Software such as Microsoft Windows and Office requires you to keep upgrading both software and hardware. Open source software, on the other hand, is much less resource-intensive, meaning that you can run it well even on older hardware. It's up to you when it's time to upgrade

6. Interoperability

Open source software is much better at adhering to open standards than proprietary software is.

7. Auditability

With closed source software, you have nothing but the vendor's claims telling you that they're keeping the software secure and adhering to standards. The visibility of the code behind open source software means you can see for yourself and be confident.

8. Support Options

Open source software is generally free, and so is a world of support through the vibrant communities surrounding each piece of software.

9. Cost

Between the purchase price of the software itself, virus protection, support charges and upgrade expenses, proprietary software takes more out of your business than you probably even realize. And for what? You can get better quality at a fraction of the price.

10. Try Before You Buy

If you're considering using open source software, it will typically cost you nothing to try it out first.

It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

Even after viewing a tutorial on the basics of using GIMP, i still could not get to grips with it. Even basic things such as layer movement are made so difficult. Layer selection is very tricky and you can't merge and move things all at once. In comparison to photoshop, this is made to be far more complicated than it needs to be. The only thing i could manage to create was a background gradient, a text border and a drop shadow.

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor

http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk/migration/benefit.html

I chose to explore Inkscape as i love to us vector graphics in Photoshop. However in comparison, Inkscape is again very difficult to get the hang of. You can't smoothly curve edges as it is one connecting line. And filling in a shape isn't as simple as selecting on part.

I decided to further explore fontforge as i struggled a bit in class. When i practised a bit more with doing the curved edges, it was quite enjoyable. I feel with further practise i will be able to create much more even shapes.