Being an artist is a dream of many of us. You have your iMac on the table, but you have no applications for being a graphics guru. You have two options basically. You can invest a lot of money into the full version of Adobe Creative Suite, but honestly – it is a lot of money when you have no business plan how to get them back. Just to have it for your own purposes – it is really very expensive.

Making graphics, taking digital photos is a great hobby, which is very relaxing. And it is great to see results, when you publish your result on the web or to see them to be used somewhere in the real world. Nothing can make you happier than provided feedback about the great job you do. It is a real motivation.

For a serious graphics work you need to cover the following areas:

• Importing, sorting and storing of pictures;
• Pixel Graphics;
• Effect Filters Library;
• Vector Graphics;
• Web Graphics and Publishing;
• Desktop Publishing;
• Web Publishing;
• Other useful tools.

It is a lot of stuff you need, when you plan to take your work seriously. In each of the categories you can find an application, which can be used for free. Sure, you cannot expect, the work will be so comfortable as working purely with the very complex Adobe Creative Suite, but it has a big advantage – the costs.

As a Mac OS X user you can benefit from the common Unix roots of the system. As the system is generally UNIX based, transition of open source applications from Linux is pretty easy. And Linux is a real incubator for open source applications.

The plan is to cover one area each week with applications, which can really help you. Some of them are completely provided for free and some of them are provided as a shareware and the price is pretty competitive. The final decision about the application of your desire is always to be made by you personally as the taste of individual users differs.

Each of the topics will have its own icon as follows:

    Importing, sorting and storing

    Pixel Graphics

    Effects

    Vector Graphics

    Web Graphics

    Desktop Publishing

    Web Publishing

    Tools

Some of the applications are mention on my blog, but I will try to cover them in a deeper overview to allow you to select the correct and suitable solution. The process of selection of the right application is difficult and I always to download the trial versions of the application and selecting the correct one finally. I usually take the one, which has the best user interface and I can work comfortably with. Also, the help provided by the application is very important as you can do many effects, but you need to know how.

So my final recommendation will be fully based on my personal experience and your own exceptation from the application does not have to be necessarily met. The world of graphics and approaches are really very different and necessarily, your own style and approach can be very different from mine.

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