Unless you have a company buying licenses for you, tools like Photoshop, Pro Tools, Maya, or even Windows can be a serious bite out of your wallet. Here are some more affordable options to those normally pricey apps that’ll help you stop fretting and get more done. 10. GIMP (Free, for Windows, macOS, and Linux) The first one’s a bit obvious. If you don’t have the money for Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions, or never purchased a copy of Photoshop for yourself, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP for short) is for you. It’s feature-rich, powerful (even moreso with the GIMPShop plugin), and with just a little work, can work pretty much exactly like Photoshop when you need it to. If you have a little trouble getting started with it though, that’s okay—it can look a little daunting, but this cheat sheet full of shortcuts and tips can help you navigate it and get up to speed quickly. After all, it’s your favorite PhotoShop alternative for a … [Read more...] about Top 10 Free Alternatives to Expensive Software
Free alternative to microsoft office
Best Microsoft Office alternatives
(Credit: Microsoft, CBS Interactive) Microsoft has dominated the office software market for over a decade. Its ubiquitous Office remains the standard for businesses in preparing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. So powerful is Microsoft in this market that in 2008 its default document format, Open Office XML (OOXML), became an ISO standard, making Microsoft Office a recognised international standard for editing and archiving documents. However, the last several years have seen a proliferation of office suites. This has principally been driven by a movement towards cloud computing, a paradigm that gives businesses access to on-demand, low-cost applications online via the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Despite this strong movement, there has also been a steady stream of competitors in the desktop space, with many offering high-quality alternatives to Microsoft Office for minimal or no cost. Contents Introduction Corel WordPerfect Office X5 Google Docs IBM … [Read more...] about Best Microsoft Office alternatives
10 free tools to boost office productivity
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but there is always freeware and freemium software. With nations and companies focusing on productivity to increase competitiveness, ZDNet Asia scoured the web to compile 10 free tools you can consider adding to your repertoire to boost your productivity at work. Note: all applications listed are for Windows-based systems (sorry, Mac and Linux folks!) but some have Apple Macintosh- or Linux-compatible versions available. LibreOfficeLibreOffice is a free and open-source alternative to the Microsoft Office productivity suite. A fork of Oracle-owned OpenOffice, the office suite includes tools similar to Microsoft Office staples such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Visio — known as Writer, Calc, Impress, Base and Draw, respectively. While LibreOffice promotes itself as a program that has a familiar look and feel to the Microsoft Office Suite, such that those loyal to the latter will find it "easy and painless" to switch to, there are … [Read more...] about 10 free tools to boost office productivity
The best free alternative to Evernote 2018
Last year, Evernote's developers announced that the free note-taking app is undergoing significant changes. Controversially, these include limiting the Basic (free) account tier to just two devices, and raising the prices of Plus and Premium accounts to US$3.99 (about £2.96, AU$5.37) and $7.99 (about £5.93, AU$10.75) per month respectively.That's disappointing news for anyone who uses the app on their desktop and mobile devices to keep track of thoughts, gather resources for projects or jot down ideas throughout the day.The company vowed to give current users time to adapt before the new limits kick in, but if you're looking for an Evernote alternative, here are your options.1. Microsoft OneNoteText, drawings, web clips, audio – OneNote stores it allPrice: FreeStorage: Through OneDrive (5GB as standard)Devices supported: UnlimitedIf you use Evernote as a multimedia pinboard or to manage projects, Microsoft OneNote is an excellent alternative. The OneNote app comes … [Read more...] about The best free alternative to Evernote 2018
LibreOffice makes its case as open source alternative to MS Office
After a headline lull, LibreOffice on Wednesday renewed its drive to replace Microsoft Office with the newest version of its open source suite of applications. The latest update comes as the organization behind LibreOffice says that its products are now being used by some 80 million users around the world. In contrast, only 10 million users had downloaded the software by Sept. 2011.LibreOffice came about as part of a grass roots response to tech industry consolidation. In 2010, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, which was then responsible for an open-source software suite called OpenOffice. However, developers who became unhappy with Oracle's stewardship of the project, subsequently forked the code to create a new office suite called LibreOffice. The OpenOffice project has since been taken up by the Apache Foundation while LibreOffice wound up under the auspices of The Document Foundation. Executives from The Document Foundation expressed confidence about getting 200 million active … [Read more...] about LibreOffice makes its case as open source alternative to MS Office