Thinking outside the package

“Thinking outside the box” is a well known phrase referring to thinking beyond the obvious or perceived limitations (the box), or to throw in a movie reference ‘there is no spoon’.

I have a new phrase “Thinking outside the package” – so far it hasn’t caught on, but if “was-sup” can, why can’t “Thinking outside the package”.

To edit a photo we might say “to Photoshop”, to search for something on the net we say “Google”.  The names of software packages and applications have almost become accepted words.  If I wanted to ‘Photoshop’ a photo, but didn’t have the package, does that mean I have to buy the package or find a friend that has it and ask them to do it?  Probably not – there are lots of free software options out there that could do what I want.  I won’t recommend any particular option here, each option has advantages over others, the best option really depends on what you want from it, but just some options include pixlr.com, fotoflexer.com, Gimp, Picasa, etc.

If for some unlikely reason the Google sites were all down and I needed to research something, does that mean I can’t? – no, I can use another search engine (Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Lycos……..or go to a library).

One of the first jobs in computers I got was to create a catalog.  Other people that worked on the project before me advised the owner of the business about great (and expensive) packages he should buy for photo editing, publishing, etc – the job could have been done withe MS Office’s Word, which he already owned.  Word is used as a word processor – does this mean it doesn’t have basic images cropping, re-sizing, wrap and alignment functions and enough layout options to create a catalog of work?

I keep coming back to Photoshop because it is a phrase and package that most of us have heard.  It is an excellent and powerful package, I have it myself, but I only have it because it came as part of a bundle when I bought my laptop.  I only use a small number of its possible functions, I have trained a photographer on computers and he too uses only a small number of functions – he basically ended up paying for a lot of functions that he will not use – free software would probably have the few functions that we both use.

Thinking outside the package could have saved him money – he wanted to Photoshop images and so he bought Photoshop.

Recently a friend was talking about publishing and his thought was to buy Publisher – obviously I advised him to think outside the package!!