Since buying out Macromedia (and with it Dreamweaver, Flash etc) Adobe has a pretty much total monopoly on quality creative design software.

Although such monopolies can traditionally of course have detrimental effects on an industry sector, we aren't business analysts here, we're designers and this particular take over does have one very pleasant consumer side effect.

Users of Adobe's flagship Photoshop and Illustrator programs have long been able to access a wealth of free and trial add-ons for their software on the 'Adobe Exchange' section of the companies website:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange

Here you can spend happy hours downloading interesting and useful plug-ins, custom vector shapes, brushes etc (need a vector graphic of a country map in a hurry? no problem, it'll be on there somewhere as a shape or brush!) which have been supplied by professionals and gifted home users alike.

You can also share your ad-ons with other users by uploading them to the site.

Now of course, since the Macromedia products have come under the Adobe wing, this brilliant resource is also choc-a-block with freebies for titles such as Dreamweaver and Flash etc. So all your creative tastes can be catered for in one place.

You will have to register an account with adobe to access the exchange downloads, but this is quite a painless process and neither culls masses of unnecessary information or results in any more than a fine trickle of adobe spam. (to be honest the few newsletters you do get are actually pretty handy like notifications of workshops and conventions dedicated to Adobe creative software products.)

So win, win really.

So if you haven't already, go and see what Adobe Exchange has to offer.