First of all, free software is not the same as freeware. Quoting Wikipedia,

"Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed with little or no restriction. Freedom from such restrictions is central to the concept, with the opposite of free software being proprietary software (a distinction unrelated to whether a fee is charged). The usual way for software to be distributed as free software is for the software to be licensed to the recipient with a free software license (or be in the public domain), and the source code of the software to be made available (for a compiled language)."

In practice, however, most free software are available on the Internet free of charge. For more on the free software movement and philosophy is available from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) website.

Although not many, but there are very useful free tools for graphic and multimedia design with support for multiple platforms. In other words, they work on several types of computers and under different operating systems, like Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux (and Unix-likes in general) or Mac OS (Classic or X). Below is a one-per-category list of free, community-supported and actively-developed alternative tools for illustration, photo-manipulation, 3d modeling, 2d animation and desktop publishing. Each application name is linked to it's website. Unless otherwise stated, all applications listed here are available for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X.


Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, and CorelDraw that uses the W3C standard scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. The deviantART Inkscape user community is ~Inkscapers. For clip art that's liberally licensed, check the OpenClipart project which serves a great archive of user-contributed SVG artwork that you might find useful.

The GIMP

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. You can find GIMP resources on deviantART by checking or including the GIMP Actions, GIMP Brushes or even GIMP Tutorials categories in your search. GIMPShop is a version of the GIMP with it's interface modified to match that of Adobe Photoshop so as to lower the learning curve for Photoshop-trained artists.

Blender

Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. For documentation, Wikibooks has collection of books about it available at [link] .

Synfig Studio

2D animation is an area in which free software lags way far behind proprietary counterparts. At the time of this writing (late 2006), Synfig Studio is the only usable (and really nice!) 2D animation package that I could find. I think both KToon and UIRA are, arguably, roughly developed prototypes. Synfig Studio is self-proclaimed as "a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources." You really gotta check their artwork gallery at [link] !!

Scribus

According to it's website, Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. I haven't personally used it, but it seems to be actively developed and maintained.

Last but not least, Web developers and designers might want to check the Open Web Design repository for a wide array of liberally licensed Web templates.


That's all for today. Hope you find them useful!