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What are the most popular design apps? It’s rather hard to estimate most popular design software relying on vendor selling information and there are no general stat as well. But there are some new online services which tracks apps usage by installing special software and it works like Alexa for websites. According to websites Wakoopa and Software Informer most popular design apps are:

1. Adobe Creative Suite

Adobe Creative Suite is a collection of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications.

2. Picasa

Picasa is a free software application for organizing and editing digital photos.

3. ACDSee

ACDSee is shareware image organizer software for Windows.

4. IrfanView

IrfanView is a freeware image viewer that can view, edit, and convert image files.

5. PhotoStudio

PhotoStudio is photo editing application featuring an advanced tools, filters and FX.

6. Xnview

Xnview is free cross-platform image viewer used for viewing, converting, organizing and editing.

7. Gimp

Gimp is Open Source raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs.

8. Paint.NET

Paint.NET is freeware raster graphic editor with all the essentials tools and advantages.

9. PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is app for digital picture editing and handling.

10. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is the graphic design package including vector editor and image editor.

11. PhotoStitch

PhotoStitch is program to mix related photos to arrange a panorama view images.

12. FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer is image viewer that also can edit and convert images.

13. Inkscape

Inkscape is Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw.

14. Nvu (Kompozer)

Nvu (Kompozer)is WYSIWYG HTML editor, based on the Composer component of Mozilla Application Suite.

15. Microsoft Expression Studio

Microsoft Expression Studio is suite of design and media applications aimed at developers and designers.

16. Ulead PhotoImpact

Ulead PhotoImpact is image-editing suite with retouch tools, red eye removals, and hundreds of masks and textures.

17. SnagIt

SnagIt is app to select anything onscreen and capture it, annotate and enhance with a built-in editor.

18. Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is 3D modeling program designed for professional architects, civil engineers, filmmakers, game developers.

19. Paint Shop Pro

Paint Shop Pro is photo-editing software for everything from easy, automatic photo fixes to precision editing.

20. Axialis IconWorkshop

Axialis IconWorkshop is icon editor can create icons for both Windows (.ico) and Macintosh (.icns).

Will be JPEG 2000 vs. HD photo the next format war like it was with HD DVD and Blu-ray? It’s rather hard to answer this question right now. While currently most of digital images in the world are stored in JPEG format, rapid development of digital photo technology require new more effective technology at the back and JPEG format approved in 1994 is for sure outdated.

JPEG 2000 offers much better quality/size ratio as well as Microsoft’s new format HD Photo that is claimed to deliver “a lossy compressed image of better perceptive quality than JPEG at less than half the file size”, and that “lossless compressed images … are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data”. Both HD photo and Jpeg 2000 are very similar.

According to JPEG 2000 and HD photo image formats comparison by CS MSU Graphics&Media Lab despite commercial announcements, WMPhoto quality is similar to JPEG2000. Some implementations of JPEG 2000 (better results shows ACDSee, Lurawave and Leadtools Photoshop plugin JPEG 2000 codecs) significantly outperform WMPhoto in objective and subjective comparison.

You could also check up Image Compression Benchmark which stated that JPEG 2000 in most cases outperforms HD photo in lossy compression quality, in lossless compression both image formats are similar in compression ratio but HD photo is faster.

JPEG 2000 appeared earlier (in 2000) but still isn’t accepted by industry and isn’t widely supported by hardware and software manufacturers. While there are only Joint Photographic Experts Group behind Jpeg 2000, HD photo is promoted by powerful Microsoft which could be enough to win. But probably a brand new revolutionary image format could appear to defeat both of them.

I am glad to announce the winners of the Get Your Free Website Contest that started over 1 month ago. The contest aimed to help non-commercial organization and individuals find online community for their socially important projects and to popularize open source web solutions. The winners are awarded based on their idea freshness, importance and creativity. Congratulations to winners! And thanks to everyone who helped to spread the word out! (more…)

Though looking at Photoshop masterpieces could be more inspiring, looking at bad Photoshop works could be funny. Especially if this mistakes are in famous brands ads. You can learn how to easily tell one from the other and not make similar mistakes yourself. PhotoshopDisasters provides you with regular reviews of oddly Photoshop mistakes in famous brands commercials. As PhotoshopDisasters claims: “clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter”. On this site you can see a truly awful Photoshop works made for GTA 4, Elle, Washington Post, The Sun, KFC and many others.

To watch a video about webdesign and website building is sometimes a better idea than to read a lot blog posts on the topic. Here are links to number of awesome Youtube videos about creating and designing your site which are worth many words. You can watch handpicked videos about Content and Link Building, SEO, Usability, Monetization and Advertising as well. (more…)

Do you need free stock textures for webdesign, graphic design or 3D? Are you tired of searching textures across thousands of websites? Then take a look at this top 10 free stock textures sites. All of them have large number of free high-resolution nice textures, easy browsable and searchable. There are a lot of categories to choose from: nature, fabric, splatter, sign, HDR textures, seamless textures, animals and objects. (more…)

When you (or your company) are going to make a website for the first time there are usually some important questions arise: what to do, in what sequence and how? Which web designer or web design studio you should choose? What is the right process of website development? You’d better have a plan at first to follow and get the desired result. So ask yourself a first question: what do you want to get? (more…)