AlternativeTo: Find Free Software Alternatives

Looking for free alternatives to Photoshop, Microsoft Office, or Dreamweaver? The site AlternativeTo makes it easy to find a wide variety of replacements for these and many more commercial software packages.

One can limit searches to programs available for Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems, or online platforms if preferred. One can also browse by "most views," "most likes," recent additions, or applications waiting for alternatives suggestions. Conducting a search on a specific program yields a description of the key features of that software, accompanied by a list of its alternatives.

AlternativeTo is continually updated with user-generated suggestions, comments, and votes. Alternatives to a particular software selection are listed in order of user community "likes," with links to user comments where available. As a user, you are invited to "get involved" by suggesting your own alternatives to an application or suggesting changes to the application's entry. This is a wonderful and very useful example of the ReadWrite Web!

Can You (or Your Students) Afford Not to Know About Free Photoshop Alternatives?

Yet another profile and assessment of Photoshop alternatives has appeared: Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers, by Jolie O'Dell on ReadWriteWeb. O'Dell reviews 1) Photofiltre, 2) Paint.NET, 3) The GIMP, 4) Aviary, 5) Splashup, 6) flauntR, and 7) FotoFlexer. And here yet another reviewer finds GIMP to be a superior choice. "All things being equal, there's not a lot we can say to criticize GIMP. As an open source app, it is subject to continuous rounds of improvement; there is no free app that will duplicate the Photoshop experience as well as GIMP will."

Even if you already own Photoshop, you may want to keep these resources in mind for your students, who will surely appreciate knowing about free and open source alternatives. A couple of recent and related entries on this blog are worth mentioning, too. One post is about a SitePoint article on 19 Impressive Online Image Editors (many of which are free), and the other post is about GimpShop, a free modification of the GIMP that's intended to replicate the feel of Photoshop.

Via Ellyssa Kroski at iLibrarian.

Image: from Jolie O'Dell, Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers