In preparation for my presentation at Beer and Blog I hastily put together this list of useful design resources. I hope people find them helpful. I’m also quite positive I’ve left off quite a few things that are obvious. Please feel free to leave suggestions.
Pixel Pushers
Pixelmator (OSX) - http://www.pixelmator.com/
Great low cost image editor for the mac. Very much like photoshop though in its infancy.
Paint.NET (PC) - http://www.getpaint.net/
Free image editor for the PC. Been seeing it garner traction lately. An undergraduate project that’s grown up a bit. Source code available too.
Picturesque (OSX) - http://www.acqualia.com/picturesque/
A very quick small, focused image editor for the mac. Easier to make rounded corners and reflections with it than photoshop. Batch processing can be quite useful.
The GIMP - http://www.gimp.org/
Completely free and works on anything. Started its life on Linux I believe. I’ve never been a huge fan but some people LOVE it. Of course they also tend to love writing their own drivers and other scary linuxy things.
Screenshots Galore
Snipping Tool (Vista) - http://snurl.com/25025
Great article on Life Hacker on how to use the new built in screenshot tool for Vista. Glad Windows finally built in something better than Print Screen.
Print Scr (PC)
For those without Vista, you can also take screenshots by tapping Print Screen on your keyboard. This will capture the screenshot onto you clipboard. No mouse point though. Pressing Alt + Print Screen will capture JUST the active window. Great for sharing screenshots of how badly your website is broken in IE6.
Shift + Command + 3 (OSX)
This will automatically capture a screenshot of the current screen onto your OSX desktop. If that’s too awkward of a key combination, you can always go to System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts. There you can see all kinds of helpful shortcut and change them to your hearts content. I also highly reccomend "Alt + Shift + Command + 4". Then you can copy a selectable (click and drag a box on what you want) picture of the screen to the clipboard. Even better, before you click, press the Spacebar. Your mouse will turn into a little camera and you can click any open window to get a screenshot of just it, window shadow and all.
Skitch (OSX) - http://skitch.com/
My current face. They just make it far too easy to take a screenshot, mark all over it, upload it and share it. Useful for spreading ideas quickly. Too bad that its mac only. Their file organization and page layout could use some work though.
Screengrab! (Firefox Extension) - http://www.screengrab.org/
Another great tool, this time specifically for Firefox. Great for grabbing a screenshot of the entire contents of the page, not just what you see on screen. Can copy straight to clipboard or save out to a file.
Paparazzi (OSX) - http://www.derailer.org/paparazzi/
What I used to use for grabbing screenshots of pages on the mac. You input the url and I believe it uses Webkit/Safari to generate the screenshot. Nice part is that it lets you specify exact width.
SnagIt (PC) - http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
Probably the better known screen capturing utility for Windows. Paul Biggs swears by it, though I haven’t messed with it much myself.
Screen/Video Capture and Video Hosting
Screen Flow (OSX) - http://www.varasoftware.com/products/screenflow/
A great new app for capturing video of your screen, mouse and mouse clicks, camera, mic, system sounds. It has some pretty simple built in editing too so that you don’t have to open up iMovie. (Why did you have to ruin iMovie, Apple!? Why!?!)
Camtasia (PC) - http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
Also from TechSmith, the same people that make SnagIt. I’ve used it once and it was pretty adequate for my needs at the time. Again, I think the PC users are missing out on some really good, simple apps. This one is a bit more of a heavyweight.
Vimeo - http://www.vimeo.com
Need a place to host video that has higher quality content and feedback? Vimeo has to be one of my favorite sites on the net. Really great atmosphere, excellent web design and even the option to upload High Def video. Hard to beat. Great for hosting video-blogs, short vidcasts and your own homegrown videos. Not the place to host your marketing materials.
Blip.TV - http://blip.tv/
Now this is the place where you can host your marketing materials. Or you developer videos. Or anything you want really. Really great for hosting say your own online product reviews or something of that nature. Anything episodic in nature works well with their interface.
Image and Design Resources
Flickr - http://flickr.com/photos/chibbell/
The goto resource for hosting your photos online. Also a great place for me to host all my screenshots and keep them organized. Also a great resource for free photography if you pay attention to what license the photographer is using. Surprising amount of people are ok with you using their photos. Also a good resource for finding random objects, textures and effects that you could manipulate or cutout and make your own imagery with.
stock.xhang - http://www.sxc.hu/
Great resource for free stock photography. Not quite as nice as flickr but a lot more of your typical stock photos can be found here. If you’re on a budget or just need something simple, this is the place to check. Site can be a bit on the slow side at times.
iconBase - http://iconbase.com/
Great free icons from the people of Yellow Icon.
Silk Icons - http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
A set of 1,000 16x16 icons from Mark James. Realy great stuff. Heck, we use some of it in Clearspace.
Designer’s Toolbox - http://www.designerstoolbox.com/designresources/
Recently found by my colleague, John Lascurettes. A really great collection of resources for design. Everything from PSD’s of form elements from every modern browser to templates for CD labels. Never forget the dimensions of a A10 envelope again!
Open Source
Open Source Living - http://osliving.com/
Hands down one of the best designed and organized resources I’ve seen for open source software. A lot of potentially great apps in there that I’ve yet to try. Gotta thank Chris Kalani for this one.
Comments
- 18 Comments
Michael Sigler Sat Apr 19 2008 at 11:58 am
Ooooh those are indeed nice. And DOH! Totally my bad for not including COLOURlovers, Darius. I knew I would leave off something important.
Andrew Eglinton Sat Apr 19 2008 at 12:29 pm
Thanks for the kind words about Open Source Living. Really appreciate the support.
Am I right in thinking that you work for Jive? If so, does Jive do an Open Source version of Clearspace? If not do you know of an OSS equivalent?
Thanks.
Andrew.
inaequitas Sat Apr 19 2008 at 02:48 pm
There is also Seashore [http://seashore.sourceforge.net/] as a more OS X-y (=P) version of the GIMP. It might be “more at home” for some people than the original, as well as not being dependent on X11.
Awesome list, thank you!
Paul Biggs Sat Apr 19 2008 at 10:06 pm
Sig! I wish I could have made it to see your skills in action. You will eventually convince me to get a mac… slowly, but surely. Over here on the PC I’m loving Paint.NET—tried GIMP many times, but it just is horrid with text. Really drops the ball. No anti-alias out of the box, and getting it there took me a few hours of hacking and help forums… and still nothin’
Michael Sigler Sun Apr 20 2008 at 12:16 am
@Andrew - Thanks for stopping by. Hope I can drive even a little traffic your way. It really is a great site. I sincerely appreciate when someone has put some thought into how the purpose and organization of something.
You are correct in that I work for Jive. I don’t know of anything that resembles Clearspace on the market right now. We’re trying to do something a bit different. If you want to check it out, we do offer dev’s a development version on Jivespace, our dev community. http://www.jivesoftware.com/dev
@inequitas - I will have to check it out. 
@Biggsy Biggs - I still haven’t tried Paint.NET myself but I saw a few other Jivers trying it out. May have to give it a shot.
Bill Winett Sun Apr 20 2008 at 03:58 pm
Since you mentioned SnagIt, I thought I would mention FastStone (http://www.faststone.org/). Excellent product. I’ve just started using Vista’s Snipping Tool. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll go back to FastStone.
A good alternative to Camtasia is the open source Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/).
Haiming Sun Apr 20 2008 at 10:25 pm
Well Well,I’m gonna crazy,
Thank Thank Thank you for the Great work!!
Rick Palmer Wed Apr 23 2008 at 10:17 am
Be sure to get the BoltBait Plugin Pack if you’re using Paint.NET, as it’ll let you do things like set transparency on images:
http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=22819
Just download the zip file and extract it to your C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\Effects folder and then restart Paint.NET. You’ll find a “Transparency” menu under “Adjustments”.
Paul Biggs Wed Apr 23 2008 at 11:56 am
Rick - THANKS! Awesome link. And Sig, while I was there, I found a wet-floor plugin for Paint.NET too. Watch out!
http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2520
Rick Palmer Wed Apr 23 2008 at 07:27 pm
Paul - YES, that’s exactly what I have been looking for. Now I can make a web 2.0 logo for my site. Very cool. Thanks for posting the link.
The only thing I wish the transparency plugin I mentioned earlier had, was the ability to click an image and have the selected color be the transparent color (like the old image editor that used to come with MS Office - remember that piece of junk? well, it did that one particular thing very well, and I miss simple things like that).
Anyway, Paint.NET combined with Vista’s built-in snipping tool keeps me happy. I do a lot of screen shots for education-related materials and documentation (slide, labs, etc). I pretty much just keep Paint.NET and the Snipping Tool open all day long and use them numerous times. Very nice - and FREE - tools!
abducent Fri Jul 24 2009 at 07:03 pm
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
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Welcome
I am Michael Sigler and this is my blog. I am a designer, artist, art director, writer, dungeon master and all around geek. I live in Portland, OR with my wife Joleine. During the day I work for the fine folks at Jive Software.
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Projects
These are the communities and projects that I proudly help lead and maintain.
Dragon Avenue
A community and news site for fans of Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games.
Refresh Portland
A monthly gathering focused on spreading a little design knowledge to the dark corners of Portland, OR.
Darius A Monsef IV Sat Apr 19 2008 at 11:43 am
Some more nice free icons:
http://prothemedesign.com/free-webdesign-tools/circular-icons/
(Self Plug)
And for colors ideas: http://www.COLOURlovers.com