Open Source Design Software Sucks

Well, it sucks for professional medias such as magazines and newspapers - especially in businesses that have to collaborate with other industry professionals to get the product out the door (such as printing companies).

Usability. Compatibility. Advanced controls. Proper format and color space support. Lets cover a few of the quick flaws of some of the major open source programs available for designers..

The GIMP's (3rd party) CMYK support just plain doesn't cut it. It's .jpg generation creates so many compression artifacts that it isn't worth using. Managing type and choosing typefaces is an incredible hassle.

Scribus hasn't seemed to figure out that having a handy type dialog would be useful - not that it gives you many options in adjusting type, however.

InkScape's PDF generation and type control both are horrid.

This is a precursor to a set of reviews of all of the aforementioned programs. I will be comparing each to Adobe's Creative Suite line of software, listing in detail where the major flaws are that prevent each from being usable in the majors (or even at a tiny newspaper).

-WFL