OStatic

Among advanced open source graphics tools, GIMP has a lot of fans, and there are many free online resources available for it, but if you're looking for a drawing and illustration tool that can compete with Adobe Illustrator and is especially good for logos and splashy still graphics, give Inkscape a try. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and is well-known as a powerful and flexible drawing and vector editing application. In this post, you'll find four resources for getting familiar with Inkscape's capabilities, and they'll help you get going quickly with the application.

We've written about Scribus, a popular open source desktop publishing application before, and it recently came out in a new version 1.3.5.1. This update is the result of almost 2 years of intensive work, according to Scribus' community, and it has a number of new features that people wished for in previous versions. It's downloadable now for Windows, the Mac and Linux, and I've been putting it through its paces. Here's what's under the hood in the new version.

Blender, an open source 3D modeling application so powerful it has been used to create high-quality, full-length animated films, is out in a new version 2.49. The announcement of the new version is here, including details on many significant new improvements. Among other things, it looks like developers are paying a lot more attention to video capabilities, which could make Blender a bigger player in movies and online video offerings.

GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a widely used and respected open source graphics program, especially attractive because it runs on Windows, the Mac and Linux. Originally created at U.C. Berkeley its interface and feature set run neck-and-neck with expensive proprietary graphics programs, and it has a huge community of developers and plug-in creators. The GIMP site has many useful resources for the application, and you can find an increasing number of ways to imbue GIMP with all the smarts of applications such as Photoshop. Here's our updated collection of great resources for GIMP, including instructions on using Photoshop filters with it, a full-length free online book, and more.?

Someone was recently asking me which open source applications I would recommend to a business user who doesn't want to spend any money for a full set of individual applications or bog down a business with expensive licensing fees. In this post, I'll round up six free applications for doing everything from word processing to online meetings--with panache. You'll find a few open source applications here and also some freeware offerings, because I'm a firm believer that if a freeware app wins, it wins.