5 Free alternatives to Adobe products
A quick summary is: Gimp, NVU, Avidemux, Foxit PDF Reader, and SMIL.
Adobe Photoshop – free alternative: The Gimp
Yes, The Gimp does get wheeled out fairly often for lists of free applications but that’s because it’s really good! With tons of functionality and the ability to use filters and libraries designed for Photoshop, The Gimp rocks.
Adobe Dreamweaver – free alternative: NVU
NVU (pronounced ‘N-view’) is a free, open-source WYSIWYG web design application. It gives you the option to work in a design layout or edit your html directly, and is generally credited with producing pretty clean, reliable code.
Adobe Premiere – free alternative: Avidemux
Widely regarded as the best free video editing application available, Avidemux features support for a large number of file types and advanced scripting capabilities. It’s also a joy to use and is more than powerful enough for home users.
Adobe Reader – free alternative: Foxit PDF Reader
Who can be bothered waiting for the splash screen to disappear as this bloated beast starts up? Feature creep has begun to cripple Reader so switch to a free (if not exactly open source) option: Foxit. It’s much faster.
Adobe Flash – free alternative: SMIL
This is one for the more technically capable. Flash is, undeniably, a key technology on the Internet. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) offers many of Flash’s capabilities to anyone who can take the time to start using it. It hasn’t really caught on yet but with the support of W3C, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.
