Today’s designer face major problem in carrying their work done is software. Selection of right software plays an important role in the work life of a designer. Software markets have numerous of them varying in quality and cost. We all are introduced to the big names in this world and they even don’t cost us more. But usually people don’t pay much attention to other design applications that may be helpful for them especially when you want to have economical choice. Introduced by Mashable this list contains some that are as follows:
1. Opicon Font Viewer
Opicon Font Viewer is an open source with cross platform application that facilitates you in dealing with great number of Fonts. It let you search and visualizes those fonts on different operating system like Mac, Linux and Windows. This application offers you to work with installed and uninstalled fonts to get them customized.
Surprisingly this is a Free Application.
2. Sketch
This application is specifically for Mac operating system with a price tag of $40. As its name shows it is some how the other related to vectors and yes it is a vector drawing application. It gives you a complete set of fundamental vector tool kit that can help you for working with equipment like libraries, transformational tools, multi-page documents and smart objects etc.
3. RawTherapee
A free tool for making things work with RAW photographs and the good thing is, it works on Windows and Linux platforms. RawTherapee allows you to read and translate photos into different formats.
4. Pixelmator
This is another design application that is an image editor and works only for Mac. It is known as one of the best lightweight image editors with a price of $ 29 only and an alternative to Mac Photoshop. This application has many attractive features like keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. The set of tools it has are any image editor, in addition to layers, layer groups, blending modes, retouching tools, painting and blending tools and many more. It offers you free up-gradtion as well.
5. ArtWeaver Plus
As Pixelmator is the Mac Photoshop alternative so ArtWeaver Plus is the Windows Photoshop alternative. It has variety of all basic drawing tools like crop, fill, and gradient with painting tools and offers you many advance features also. But to get facilitated by its features you need to pay a little price $40 (€29). Designers who want to give it a try you can have its free version and the good point is it is also workable on Linux platform.
6. Inkscape
This is another vector drawing application compatible with windows, Linux and Mac platforms. Inkscape provides you with the solution set of complex vector drawings such as like Illustrator’s 3D transformations or gradient mesh tool. The tools includes shapes, freehand drawing, transmigration and manipulation tools, layers, object grouping and cloning, gradients and pattern fills functionalities. It has much more functionalities in it. You can give it a free try.
7. MyPantone Palette
A worthy design application that is free itself but need to get registration to the Pantone website that is free also. You can browse, organize create and share color palettes through this application. It is compatible with Windows and Mac operating systems. Both web and print designers can work through it
8. Scribus
An open-source page layout application that is designed for the professional print designers utility. It gives you way for color management, spot color separation, pre-press preparations with PDF creation functionalities. This can work on Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems for free. Professionals can work for creating scripts through API for handling automated tasks by using Python programming Language.
Hope it will help you becoming a better designer than before 😀
Saad says
Nice post. and Cool Applications.