There is a big difference between software that
works and professional grade applications.
Often times this has to do with platform... for example Gimp is a perfectly good replacement for Photoshop on SGIs. Why? Because the newest version of Photoshop for SGI is version 3.0.1.
When looking at my work, what I do and what I need, I know (from years of experience) what I can and can't get away with with applications. I can't substitute for Photoshop in my work... but I can get away with an older version (in my case 7.0.1). But because of the limited amount of illustration work I do and the type of page layout I tend to do, I've been able to replace both Illustrator and QuarkXPress/InDesign with Stone Design's Create.
Now what I'm willing and able to do isn't something that I've even considered recommending for any of my professional clients. For them, their really is no substitute. And to some degree, because I provide training with professional applications, I too am locked into keeping
some version of most of this software around to maintain my overall familiarity with it.
So the question you have to ask yourself is...
"what do I really need given my means?"
This is an important question. Professionals can afford
professional applications because those apps are how they earn their money. But if you are semi-professional, or have need of professional-like applications but aren't planning on using them to make a living... then finding alternatives becomes an option.
Sadly, there is a wide gulf between the beginner apps (like Pages or even AppleWorks for document creation) and professional apps (like QuarkXPress & InDesign). Adobe has given us a version of Photoshop that helps bridge the barrier gap between novices and experts with Photoshop Elements. For the areas of illustration, page layout and web design I tend to recommend Create... but I do try to provide as many choices as possible (I'm not a
one size fits all type of person).
These are a handful of page layout apps that are available:
So you can see that QuarkXPress and InDesign aren't the only games in town... but you can also see by their price that they are the major league apps in this area.
One of the things I've noticed in the page layout area when working with clients (and I support a very wide range of Mac users) is that there are generally two types of people... there are the ones who see a blank page in horror wondering how they are going to even get started, and then their are the ones who see a blank page as a world of possibilities.
The first type of person I almost always point them towards Pages. It removes much of the
fear of the nothing that some people have by providing what looks like a finished document to start with. For the second type of person, generally I try to gauge how adventurous they are... and what their budget can handle.
In getting back to the
open source as a replacement part of the topic... in some cases, yes you can substitute a free app for a professional one.
TextEdit, NeoOffice and AbiWord are all fine replacements for Word for graphic designers. But then again, Word isn't one of the primary tools of graphic design. And I think that is pretty much where a lot of alternatives are going to come into play. They can replace professional applications that are actually only playing a supporting role in a designer's professional tasks.
For example, if your primary job as a designer is to create ads in magazines, then you can do your work with Photoshop and Illustrator, and can pass on the expense of paying for QuarkXPress/InDesign (which are tailored for larger multipage layouts). And by getting some alternative software for assembling PDFs, you could cover the few times that you may need to do multipage layouts.
So there is always room for alternatives... if you know the requirements of your primary tasks. And in the cases of people just starting out, sometimes finding alternatives to fill the gaps until moneys starts coming in is needed.
It is the whole
chicken and the egg thing. You need money to buy the apps, but you need the apps to make money. Alternatives can always help with this.
Of course you could also do what I did in many cases... I downloaded the demo versions of apps I thought I needed. You get around 30 days to work with them, so I would set out to earn the money to pay for the app in the 30 day window I had with the demo app. In that way I could make sure that the app paid for itself. Most of my major apps paid for themselves that way.
Just something to keep in mind.
