Absolutely. Gimp and inkscape and the like are amazing programs and 100% free opensource. If this thread even applies to you then that means you don’t have Photoshop, so why bother with it at all? Photoshop and Corel do very few things better than say Gimp, and the things they do better are advanced things that no normal user has any use for anyway. How many of you reading this had your day ruined because you could save to 32bit float format? I bet not many. I use Photoshop because I know it and I’m lazy as f*ck about learning new programs. But you know Microsoft paint can do most of the things I need to do just as well.
Yep, Blender can paint in full float 
Gimp is free, and a very good program. I like PS better, but that’s because I got my copy from school for cheap, $650 for the full suite of tools. If I ever have to replace it, I won’t and then I’ll just get in to GIMP and call it a day.
I’ve tried Inkscape, which is the Illustrator equivalent. When It runs, I like it. But, I have found it to be very buggy and crashes a lot.
If you can find legally, I would recommend CS6. But, get it quickly, as CC came out this summer, so they are not doing anything with CS6. My wife bought it and we are saving a bunch over her classmates, which are running CC. CC is the latest and is subscription based. I won’t get in to the whole thing about CLoud versus non could…just because I get tired of screaming at Adobe. LOL
It is not about whether you can work in 16/32bpc mode or not, it is all about workflow. “Advanced things” like adjustment layers, layer effects, smart objects, a non-destructive approach to image editing, work directly in Lab/cmyk mode, and so on, are part of very ordinary functionality nowadays and used in the daily tasks of millions of “normal users”, and none of that is available in Gimp.
I would love to be able to go 100% open source - unfortunately, for (semi) professional image editing there is no viable non-commercial open source alternative. I’d love to be proven wrong.
Photoshop CS2 IS free.
Adobe’s page: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html
Login required in this one, but can be found elsewhere.
(Text bolded by me) This borders on advocating piracy (a violation of our forum rules).
Section 2 of the downloadable CS2 license agreement:
- Software License. If you obtained the Software from Adobe or one of its authorized licensees and as long as you comply with the terms of this agreement, Adobe grants you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in the manner and for the purposes described in the Documentation, as further set forth below. See Section 14 for specific provisions related to certain components.
If you download CS2 from Adobe, you automatically get a license. They changed this specific part of the license agreement when they put CS2 up for download, so it’s obvious they want people to download it for free (to attract non photoshop users to their subscribtion service), despite what they say publicly.
I see that wishful thinking is still alive - don’t think for a moment that Adobe is seeding the internet with their CS2 package for all to download so that they will gain users - users that cannot get support for their package, users that aren’t likely to buy their products…
Best to look at more ethical means to your ends, this is a waste of time.
It’s not wishful thinking; there’s no ambiguity in the license agreement, all you have to do is read it. It’s so simple I can’t believe there’s so much confusion about it.
Having said that, Gimp, Krita, Mypaint are my own prefered software to use since CS2 is so old, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are able to download it from Adobe legally for free.
Are you a lawyer? If not, don’t spread baseless assertion simply having read part of a license and think that there are no repercussions for someone else taking your advice.
If you didn’t purchase a serial number, then you have no business downloading the product.
That about covers it. Thread closed.