Assemble your own Adobe Creative Suite, sans Adobe and $1200 price tag

Before I begin, a caveat: Adobe products are excellent, and open-source alternatives have not reached Adobe's level of capability or refinement, and may never do so.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's be real here: many users do not need all of the functionality available in Adobe's products. In fact, many users will never even know all of the functionality in Adobe's products, let alone need it. With that in mind, today we're going to assemble something at least recognizably similar to Adobe's Creative Suite Design Standard, which includes tools geared toward print design and creation, but is perfectly suitable for developing static documents, images and content for a variety of media, including the Web. Here's what's included in Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard:

• InDesign (desktop publishing)
• Photoshop (bitmap image creation/manipulation)
• Illustrator (vector image creation/manipulation)
• Acrobat (PDF creation/manipulation)
  

(Look for a future article where I tackle some of Adobe's other Creative Suite versions, which include Web development, animation, video and audio software.)

Here's my list of replacements:

Adobe Product	Free Alternative
InDesign	Scribus
Photoshop	GIMP
Illustrator	Inkscape
Acrobat	PDFCreator and PDFill PDF Tools

Let's take a quick look at how each of these free alternatives stacks up to its Adobe counterpart.

Scribus
Scribus (pronounced "scribe-us") is a desktop publishing application, and an alternative to Adobe's InDesign, which itself is an alternative to industry leader QuarkXpress. Scribus and other desktop publishing applications are used to create page page layouts mostly for print, but also for use on-line, especially when the output is saved as a PDF. Scribus is not compatible with the proprietary file formats used in either InDesign or QuarkXpress. You can see the Scribus team's explanation of this in their FAQ, which boils down to two things: the complexity of these file formats, and the potential legal ramifications. Scribus does support EPS, SVG, and PDF file formats, allowing import and export between the commercial products.

GIMP
The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an alternative to the ubiquitous Photoshop, and can be used to retouch/manipulate photos and compose raster images. Of all of the programs we're featuring today, GIMP is the most mature, and includes a feature you won't find in either Scribus or Inkscape: the ability to open and save Adobe's proprietary file format. That's right: the GIMP can not only import PSD files, it can also save PSD files that will open in Photoshop. Obviously, compatibility may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing. Because of it's impressive functionality and interoperability, the GIMP has earned a large and loyal fan base, and comes highly recommended. Note: if you're familiar with Photoshop, be prepared for a steep learning curve figuring out how to use the GIMP, since while the program is very powerful, it is also very different from Photoshop, and will take some getting used to.

Inkscape
Inkscape is a vector graphics program, comparable to Adobe Illustrator, the undisputed leader in this category. For those unfamiliar with the difference between vector and bitmap graphics (the kind produced via Photoshop and GIMP), vector images are made up of mathematical descriptions, therefore allowing an image to scale smoothly, while bitmap images are composed of a grid of pixels of varying colours. For more info, check out the nice explanation available on Wikipedia.

Inkscape does not support Illustrator's proprietary AI files, but it does open and save a whack of vector file formats, including Web-standard SVG files, which it actually handles better than Illustrator. Inkscape also saves PDF files, so your creations can be easily shared.

PDFCreator and PDFill PDF Tools
The three other applications we've looked at all have their own "Save As PDF" functions, but what about for programs that don't offer that feature? Here's where PDFCreator comes in. PDFCreator allows you to create PDFs from any application that has Print functionality. Once PDFCreator is installed, a new entry is added to your list of installed printers. When you print, simply select this "PDFCreator" printer to create a PDF of whatever would have printed to paper.

Say you want to merge PDFs, split PDFs into multiple pages, reorder pages within a PDF, or reformat PDFs to different page dimensions. PDFill PDF Tools allow you to do all that, and a lot more. It even creates PDFs the via a PDF printer the same way PDFCreator does. I personally prefer PDFCreator, but if you prefer, you can get away with just the one install. One potential nag with this program is that when you install it, a trial version of the company's $20 PDF Editor is also installed, but you don't have to buy anything to use the free program.

A Final Word
These applications will give the average user most of the functionality they'd require from Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard. However, there are some drawbacks:

• Less polish when compared with Adobe's products
• Lack of all features found in the Adobe Suite
• Lack of the "integration" found in the Adobe Suite
• Incompatibility or imperfect compatibility with Adobe's proprietary file formats*
• No warranty and no professional support.
  

However, at the end of the day, the $1200 price tag difference should be more than enough to convince many people to check out this free "suite".

*Some would argue that this is more a drawback of Adobe products, the way they would argue that Microsoft's proprietary Office formats are a drawback. Most of the products we are going to examine use "open" file formats, meaning the file format is available to be incorporated into any application, commercial or otherwise, including Adobe's products, if they chose to do so.