When you’re first starting out in business it can cost you an arm and a leg to buy all the best software, and then many of them need to be upgraded every year or so. If you need a particular program for the type of work you do, then you really need to invest in the best. But how many times do you want a good graphic design program for fiddling around with things for yourself, or a good photo-editing program. If it’s just for our own things - or to play around with - it can be difficult to justify the expense of some of the top programs.

So I’ve been doing some research and have found several great open source (usually free) options. Here are some of them:

1. For a cheap alternative to Photoshop, try Paint.net or The Gimp.

2. An open source program designed to do those jobs ideal for Illustrator, try Inkscape.

3. To convert documents to pdf, you have a good choice. There’s pdf995, CutePDF or PrimoPDF.

There are heaps of other open source programs available. I’ll post some more soon. Have fun playing with them!