Now a days its not hard to start as designer but it is hard to find right tool, in case if you were successful to get tools but they are not always free. As we all know free word attracts us all a lot but most of the time we see free products as of low quality or with less functionalities. But If you have made up your mind to be as designer than you are in good place. I am providing here some free open source software name and their brief description for you.
Gimp– Free open source software, same interface for layers and brushes to play with your photos. I usually prefer Photoshop and to be honest i have used Photoshop only most of the time but if you don’t seem to have that much money to afford Photoshop or other payable subscription for software than GIMP is the best choice for photo manipulation(like retouching, balancing hue/saturation) and digital art creation. It is obvious that you can get some really cool tools by paying some money like affording Photoshop elements but not for free.
Inkscape– vector design or logo design than Inkscape is perfect choice for you that can give you the attributes and
functionality that you can use for free as it is a open source free program and as vector graphics creation is very powerful when you tend to create something like logo or print design(business card, brochures etc) because vector. graphics doesn’t lose their quality when scaled down or up. Inkscape is free and equivalent choice for adobe illustrator/ coral draw that you can use to create eps or spg files.
Scribus– Scribus, a page layout program for Linux, Windows and many more platform out there in market. Scribus is equivalent free version for InDesign when you need the attributes and functionality to create layout or digital print production and you need it for free than it is the best choice for you. As it is open source you can also contribute you ability or characteristics. It may be not as good as Indesign but for free you can use it without violation any license from payable vendor.
Composer– If you are looking for something like Dreamweaver than go for composer it is free open source tools and just like Dreamweaver it is a WYSIWYG editor, these type of editor are good for those who are more of visual guys who wants to look side by side how it looks what they are doing. But if you are not that kind of guy you can simply use free text editors like notepad, notepad ++, sublime etc.