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Lots more people are having to print barcode labels for themselves these days while running an ecommerce businesses Sometimes, the right solution is to let someone else handle it for you—but not always, and even if you do, there’s good chance you will still have to fill some orders yourself.

When people think of labels, the first thing that comes to mind is lines of text like addresses or tab markers. But these are just the simplest uses for labels. Photos, greeting cards, business cards, inserts for CD jewel cases

This tutorial covers using templates, how to import images and use and insert text, in-depth instructions on using spreadsheets and mailmerge and more.

Barcodes provide a simple, reliable, machine-readable way to read numbers or addresses into your computer (or smartphone or tablet) so that information can be looked up online or in a database. There are a number of different standards for barcodes, and the most-commonly used ones are quite easy to use and create with simple free software applications,

OK, LibreOffice is free for the download, and you can install it on as many different machines as you choose. But a free price and a free license aren’t much good if the software doesn’t have the features you want. Happily, that’s usually not a concern with LibreOffice or its predecessor, OpenOffice.

The free software world moves rapidly, but every individual project also moves at its own pace and rhythm. Consequently, it is easy to get behind on the news. Here is a look at the state of the art in the open source desktop publishing (DTP) arena for fall 2011.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2011 Tux Paint Summer Contest. We thank all the participants for thier entries. We must admit, judging was extremely difficult so we decided to add an additional 10 winners who will each get a Tux Paint t-shirt.

Grab Tux Paint, make a cool drawing, win one of 3 OLPC laptops, one of 10 Sugar-on-a-stick and other awesome prizes! The 2011 Tux Paint Summer Drawing Contest is sponsored by Worldlabel.com and is open to all children aged 3 to 12 who live anywhere in the World!

The vector editor Inkscape is what some might call a best-kept-secret among open source projects — in part, because few people outside the graphic design community have any experience working with vector artwork; also, in part, because it’s so powerful that it can seem intimidating at first blush. Here are a collection of Inkscape resources you may find helpful in learning Inkscape and in expanding your skill set.

Although TeX is most often used to create structured documents like research papers, it can be used to generate any document type — including specialty items. For the unfamiliar, here are some resources for using TeX to print envelopes, labels, badges, and cards.

On a free software desktop, printing is rarely a problem, because significant work has gone into making CUPS, Foomatic, and other parts of the printing tool chain work well. There are still a few things the average user can do to enhance the quality of prints from graphics applications like GIMP.

New open source projects launch all the time and there’s so many great ones out there it’s hard to find the diamonds in the rough. Here are 10 promising young FOSS projects to keep an eye on as their development grows. Download or use them in the meantime as they develop, they are awesome!

Tuxpaint is an open source graphics program that occupies a special niche: it is designed for children. This makes it a rarity in the software community known for every developer scratching his or her own itch. Tuxpaint has just six tools: paintbrush, rubber stamp, line tool, text tool, polygon tool, and eraser.

All desktop environments support camera import, image management and editing applications. But the desktop defaults are really geared towards casual users. Don’t be fooled by that, though; open source can and does offer the tools to support professional photographers and high-end enthusiasts.

Despite the fact that open source has specialty label-and-business-card programs, most users are going to continue to create their documents in the word processor they feel most comfortable with like OpenOffice.org Writer. It is a good choice; it provides design wizards that simplify creating print-ready documents for standard label templates, and OpenOffice’s mail merge backend is quite powerful

User interface prototyping is supposed to be a creative discipline, where the tools don’t get in the way, so you can place your ideas on the screen just like you would draw them freehand on the back of a napkin. Up until recently, however, there was not a high quality open source UI prototyper. Those days are in the past, though, thanks to Pencil.

A two part article: In the world of label creation software for Linux, gLabels is the long-standing market leader. It offers a convenient graphical interface in which you can design labels with the same tools you are used to finding in image editing software, but it also supports business-friendly advanced features like “mail merge” and barcode generation.

Are you ever overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of open source software projects produced by the community? Even when looking at just a subset — such as graphics applications. Let’s examine each design field in turn. We’ll start by describing the leading program or programs in each, followed by the smaller or younger projects, and end with the special-purpose tools.

MyPaint is a lightweight, easy-to-use open source painting application that you might not have heard of before. It’s not a photo editor, it doesn’t bother with paths, geometric shapes, text manipulation, or fancy masking options. Instead, it focuses on one and only one use: painting.

Styles is one of OpenOffice.org's most powerful yet underused features. A style is a collection of formatting instructions that you set once and then apply as needed throughout a document. This articles provides a hands-on guide to using styles.