Thinking of buying photo-editing software? Don't
Two things are happening to software that should be of interest to trade unionists. First, software that used to cost a great deal of money is now often available completely free of charge. Second, that software – which used to come on CD-ROMs – now is often available for use online, through your web browser.
A good example of this is photo editing software. We have all faced the problem of wanting to put images on our websites, but also wanting such simple things as reducing the image size, or cropping the image, or even getting rid of the dreaded 'red-eye' that appears in photos.
In the bad old days, doing this meant purchasing software such as Adobe Photoshop, which today sells for over £500. I used to recommend to unions that they invest in something less expensive such as Photoshop Elements (around £60) or Adobe's fiercest competitor, Corel Paint Shop Pro, which sells for around £50.
For branches and individual activists, I used to recommend using free software which despite having fewer features could still meet the needs of a small website. The most popular programs were The Gimp and the enormously popular IrfanView (which has had more than 26 million downloads).
All of these programs, from the expensive Photoshop to the free IrfanView required that they be installed on your computer. But the newest software doesn't even require that – it runs from within your web browser. You don't need a CD and you don't need to download anything. And you can use the software on any computer – even one that isn't yours.
A good example of free, web-based software to do image editing is Picnik (note the spelling), which is available online at http://www.picnik.com .
Using Picnik, we can take digital photos that we want to put on our websites or blogs, and edit them in the same way that we would using software that can cost hundreds of pounds.
The savings is not only in the cost of the software, but in the time it takes to learn how to use it. Software like Photoshop can be the subject of university-level courses. Books about Photoshop make very effective door-stops as they can includes hundreds of pages of text. But using software like Picnik is far simpler and much more intuitive.
The people selling expensive tools like Photoshop (and the courses, and the publishers of the books) will tell you that Photoshop can do much more than Picnik, which is true. But if you are honest about what you actually need for your website or blog, the range of features offered by Picnik is pretty comprehensive.
Picnik is currently free of charge and you don't even have to register to use it. A premium version offering more features will soon be available.
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Free web services
Eric - you might be interested in the experiment Miles Maier did in using free web services instead of desktop software. I think it can be a great route for nonprofits generally.
Achilles heel
This was an interesting study and I do think that web-based software is interesting. But ... what happens when you leave the comfort zone of your wi-fi enabled office?
Web services vs local free software
Agree, all very well if you can access the remote servers 24/7 -- there are also issues about the providers of web-based software. I do use Google's stuff for example, but I'm concerned about storing anything sensitive on remote servers -- particularly in the USA where the government is prone to demand mass access to the public's electronic trails.
There's also the problem that you may not understand the contracts you're getting into -- that services you've become dependent on as free services might decide to charge, go bust, be discontinued or just flakey. Delicious, for example, used to have a habit of going frustratingly offline for a while and its backup facility wasn't working for a fair stretch at one time.
I also suspect that the kind of small org this is aimed at wouldn't have a clue how to backup their delicious xml bookmarks (took me 20 mins of research and fiddling to figure it out)? Or synch their Google calendar (and that would mean local software) even if they can manage to figure out how to backup their GoogleDocs?
And, as I've commented elsewhere, decent bandwidth connections aren't cheap. Most people are footling along on some crappy 2-meg connection with a contention ratio of anything up to 100:1. Good luck with using remote software on that at tea-time!
Agree with Eric, free software is the way to go. I like Irfanview, I used it for years. Lately, it's started trying to bung toolbars etc on as part of its installation. You have to opt-out -- again, a challenge for the less experienced user. On the other hand, Irfanview is bog-simple, and, I think, an excellent choice overall for inexperienced users.
For people who want more bang and don't mind a learning curve, Gimp is available for Windows and Linux (and Mac if you don't mind messing about with gtk+ runtime installation which, I gather, is a pain for the less experienced Mac user). It's very easy on Windows and is offered on the Gimp-for-Win download page: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
Horses for courses
Surely the issue is what kind of software on what kind of bandwidth. Image editing using a network will involve high bandwidth exchanges.
Text document editing using web services is nothing like as bandwidth hungry.
I've been talking to some folks in Sheffield about the potential for local voluntary sector infrastructure organisations to provide this kind of service to smaller organisations in the area.
Perhaps this is what the ICT Hub should be offering? This could be managed with a slightly better deal on intellectual 'property' than we strike with Google.
And this could all be done with Open Source tools providing those services.
Learning Curve
There is a way round that GIMP learning curve if you are used to Photoshop -- Gimpshop http://gimpshop.blogspot.com/ has hacked teh GIMP interface to more closely resemble Photoshop
Annalee Newitz on web tools
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/48883/
Web services vs local free software
Agree, this is exactly what the Hub should be doing, but won't. The Hub doesn't want to fund stuff which will require ongoing revenue funding but wants to set up self-sustaining networks and knowledge bases blah blah. In short, they want to throw some seed dosh at it over a short period and expect NOT to have to spend anything on actually developing service infrastructure.
What small orgs want is applications they don't have to maintain themselves (whether locally installed and remotely maintained or remotely hosted) -- and that's exactly what small orgs aren't going to get because it would involve providing revenue-funded services which is exactly what a neo-liberal government wishes to avoid.
If there's any way of funding it, the provision of either remotely-hosted apps or an 'outsourced' (remote-access) maintenance service is what SMO's actually WANT.
Agree, apps can be provided appropriate to bandwidth but what orgs want to do doesn't always mesh with what their connection will support.