A little over a year ago I wrote about this cool new technology that was basically a smart, content-aware method for scaling images. Today, this technology has found it’s way into Adobe’s new release of Photoshop in CS4 and it’s cool as all hell.

I’m really looking to getting my hands on a copy of CS4. Also, I predict that we’ll see this feature overused pretty heavily early-on.

Much of Generation Y has this idea in their heads that everything, from information to music, should be free. I attribute the propagation of this notion to an event from way back in 1999; the advent of Napster, which seeded the minds of so many with the ideology of that “Why should I pay for something I can get for free?” And to make a long story short, Napster got shutdown and a whole new breed of decentralized file sharing services sprouted up in it’s place.

Now, not only are people freely and quite liberally sharing music, they are also sharing pictures, movies, and software, which brings us to the topic of this article: software piracy has reached epidemic proportions particularly when it comes to “pro” applications such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, Macromedia’s Flash, and Corel’s Painter. Now why are these few applications such hot items on the veritable software black market, you ask? Here are a few excuses from people that pirate software use to justify their actions:

1) “I just like to say I have it.”
2) “My friends thought my *whatever* looked cool, I guess that makes me a graphic designer so that means I should be using professional applications.”
3) “I’ll buy the program when it doesn’t cost a lot, until then, I’ll just download it.” This often goes along with excuse #2 and #3.

Most of these excuses stem from what I think are the main two reasons that people pirate: money (or lack thereof really) and the idea that pro apps somehow make them a better designer. Both of the previously stated points are pretty much moot because 1) there is an abundance of cheap and even free software out on the internet that is incredibly underestimated by the general populace, and 2) professional software does not make you a professional designer, in fact, it can make your designs look quite abominable (it seems a trend among novice to think that just because some particular software has all these wonderful features [read: filters] that they should employ every, single, hellacious, one of them). I guess what I’m trying to say here is that what software you use depends on your technical skill and intended use.

Now, back to the point about the copious amount of free and cheap software out there that’s fully capable of performing most of the same things professional level software does. First lets begin with the cheap(er) software and one of things things that most people overlook when searching for viable alternatives that don’t cost an arm and a leg; Educational versions of the “good stuff.” Yes, just about every major software company makes educational versions of their software for students and institutes, often at considerable discount. Adobe, Apple, Corel, and Macromedia offer such editions of their software. The only stipulation of using the educational version is that you cannot use the software for commercial purposes (ie. using the software to make money), but honestly, if you are planning to make a living using the software, paying full price isn’t that much to ask. Other than that, the educational versions are in no way crippled from the regular versions, everything is the same save for the license agreement.

Lastly, here is a short list of cheap, yet feature packed, alternatives for both image editing and web publishing software titles.

Image Editing
-Graphic Converter – Shareware – $30 (download) / $35 (CD)
-The GIMP – Open Source – Free
-Photoshop Elements – Retail – $90 (mac) / $100 (windows)

Web Publishing
-Freeway – Retail – $100 (express) / $250 (pro)
-BBEdit Lite – Freeware – Free
-SubEthaEdit – Shareware – Free (non commercial) / $35 (commercial)