Adobe's Project Rome seems to be no more. Now what do I do?

January 7, 2013 10:12 AM

At work earlier this year I was asked to put together an infographic style chart for a quarterly report. I used Adobe's Project Rome since it was a very easy to use graphic design outfit that could be used free and in-browser. I've been using it each quarter for our reports and I last used it right before the holidays and started a rough draft. But when I went to finish it today the entire Rome program seemed to be completely gone from Adobe's website. Now what?

We do not have any graphic design type software available aside from PowerPoint circa 2003. We are also not allowed to download any software onto our machines, which is why the in-browser component was necessary. I have no background in graphic design whatsoever, so I'm kind of at a loss here about what to do.

Ideally someone would be able to hook me up with a download of the program (they did have a downloadable desktop version, but of course we're not allowed to download anything on the work computers so I would download it onto my personal computer instead) so that I don't have to start from scratch.

With Rome, I put all the visuals and graphs together myself using screenshots and Google charts and used Rome to re-touch, crop, re-size, measure and line-up the components. The end result looked a little like this infographic.

In the case that finding a way to use Rome is not possible, any suggestions for in-browser graphic design programs that are really simple to learn, work well with text and images, and allows a great deal of customization?

posted by forkisbetter to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Adobe is now offering Photoshop CS2 for free. (Keep trying if it doesn't work, lots and lots of people are trying to access it right now)

There's also GIMP. Which has long been considered a free alternative to photoshop.

Pixlr is an online graphics editing program that might help.
posted by royalsong at 10:22 AM on January 7, 2013

Aviary, possibly?
Google docs has a bunch of presentation templates that you might find useful since you're already using Google charts.
posted by boo_radley at 10:25 AM on January 7, 2013

royalsong, I think that the free Photoshop CS2 from Adobe story has been debunked today, unfortunately.
posted by humph at 12:58 PM on January 7, 2013

I use Piktochart to create infographics for clients. It works in-browser and has a bunch of templates and is generally pretty easy to work with (there will be a bit of a learning curve though).

Pixlr is another online tool that replicates some of what Photoshop does. I use it mainly to clean up images and create transparencies.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:58 PM on January 7, 2013

In addition to Piktochart (above), try easelly or infogr.am.
posted by sad_otter at 12:32 AM on January 8, 2013