Alternative Design Tools
If you’re a WordPress blogger or running your own website, it can be a challenge to create and update content without any graphic design or illustration tools. It can also get expensive once you start adding a couple of yearly software subscriptions from Adobe, who of course own this area, so we’ve put together a list of some inexpensive options to help you keep your site looking great.
GIMP – Free
This is probably the best free Photoshop alternative. A typical web content publisher may need to at least re-compose and re-size their images. This does that and a whole lot more – from color enhancements to re-touching and layering. It’s easy to use, especially if you’ve used Photoshop in the past.
Affinity Designer – $49.99
Affinity is more akin to Adobe Illustrator in that it’s a vector based tool. If you need to create custom graphics this may be one to check out. Some of the stand out features are the precision grids and zooming capabilities and boasts a modern clean and intuitive interface.
Tiny PNG – Free
You’ll need to add images to your site at some point and fast page load times are critical. To keep your images small and looking their best, Tiny PNG offers excellent compression for your png’s or jpeg’s. This is an online tool that you can upload your images to and it delivers a compressed version.
Smush – Free
Smush is another great compression tool if you have a WordPress site. This is a plugin developed by WPMU Dev which you can install and retroactively compress images in your media library.
