Professional web designers on the Mac platform rely on commercial heavy-hitters like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and InDesign for their graphic design needs. And when it’s time to slice and dice, some depend on the excellent Dreamweaver CS4 for WYSIWYG design/development; while many Mac code jockeys swear only by editors like Coda, BBEdit or TextMate. Others prefer to mix, match or blend. Designers also rely on various supporting apps to accomplish every day jobs like FTP uploading, cross-browser testing (important if you’re designing/developing on a Mac platform only), screen-shot snapping, pixel measuring, and the like. While many of these programs are slick, they also of course cost money. Which brings us to free apps for the Mac crowd. Which are the best compared to their commercial counterparts? Or are simply great apps in a league all their own? Put away that credit card for now and let’s find out! Free Photoshop alternative (Mac) In a nutshell, GIMP provides designers with the power to accomplish almost any task that Adobe Photoshop is used for. Mac users familiar with typical Cocoa apps will find GIMP’s interface and menu system very “un-Mac” like (requiring the X Window System, commonly called X11), but if you soldier through you’ll find a powerful image editing program with all the fixins – advanced multi-layering, text and image effects, pro-level image manipulation, and a full range of design tools. High quality plug-ins are freely available to extend the app, including the ability to use some native Photoshop ones. You know, just like Photoshop. And, just like Photoshop (and, to be fair, like most Mac graphic and photo enhancement apps) PixelStyle has multiple layers, layer groups, layer effects, and dozens of filter effects with blending modes. Here are some of the best Photoshop alternatives for Mac. Affinity Photo comes with crucial tools that competing programs lack, like adjustment layers, precise selection tools, a dedicated It’s not exactly Photoshop, but it comes closer than any of the other apps you’ll find on this list or elsewhere. Also check out: Based on GIMP, Seashore is a pure cocoa app which makes it very OS X friendly. A range of tools for gradients, textures, layers, and drawing are found in Seashore. However, the program lacks many of GIMPs more powerful features so it’s not exactly a GIMP replacement either. Sporting a sleek Mac interface, LiveQuartz describes itself as a “simple and powerful free photo editor for Leopard.” It does two thing very well: layers and filters. Basic drawing tools are also included but, as with Seashore, it’s not billed as a Photoshop replacement either. In the hands of the right designer, however, fairly sophisticated designs can be created with this nice app, which is also fun to use. Free Illustrator alternative (Mac) The open-source InkScape, another Mac application that requires X11, is a viable alternative to Adobe Illustrator with its ability to create and edit graphics in scalable vector format. AI users will feel at home using InkScape with options like layer control, gradients, connector path control/manipulation, various brushes (including calligraphy), type effects, masking, EPS exporting, a 3-D shape tool, object tweaking/sculpting, and even a diagram connector tool useful for a variety of purposes, like creating site maps. Civilization games for mac. Usb flash drive format for mac. Depending on the complexity of your design, files can be exported from InkScape and into Illustrator and vice-versa. Free Dreamweaver alternative (Mac) Featuring WYSIWYG website creation and robust CSS editing, KompoZer is a mature, open-source alternative similar to Adobe Dreamweaver on the Mac, and has many of the same bells and whistles, too. Although it can’t top Dreamweaver’s rich offerings, KompoZer offers full CSS support, code viewing/editing, tabbed views, FTP site management, a color picker, clickable hierarchical properties view bar for code isolation, split views, live preview, and much more. There is even the option to call W3C’s HTML validator to check for valid markup. KompoZer is built on the architecture, but is less buggy and more feature-rich than NVU since development on that project was stopped and has been replaced by KompoZer. Also check out: For creating very simple web pages. A project started by W3C, Amaya aims to be a WYSIWYG editor for standards compliant web developers, but lacks KompoZer’s power. ![]() ![]() It also claims to be a web browser, but will likely not pass muster for most people’s normal web browsing activities. Free InDesign alternative (Mac) This open-source page layout program for the Mac, similar to Adobe InDesign, is geared towards print professionals in creating business cards, ads, magazines, newsletters, brochures, posters, signs, or just about any other kind of printed material. Although the application doesn’t allow for measurements in pixels, web designers can still take advantage of Scribus’s multi-page capabilities, master pages, and precise typographic control for quickly generating rough ideas for web banners, buttons, or even website mockups faster than you can say Photoshop! The ability to create PDFs within Scribus (including interactive ones) is another plus. Microsoft outlook calendar. Image export options include PNG, EPS, and PDF.
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