Recomend a graphics app

[Onkel Neal]

I'm looking for something I can resize images, use layers, add drop shadows, edge, simple effects, especially lighten and change hue. I've been using Microsoft Image Composer (what's that? you say?) since 2000. It does 90% of what I want, but it often has some problems with dark/black colors. I have seen Photoshop on a PC at work, looks way too complex. Any good alternatives?

[August]

Paintshop pro is what i use.

[Torplexed]

Irfanview is a free download and it might be worth a look, Don't know if it does drop shadows though.

http://www.irfanview.com/

[kiwi_2005]

I use 'Snagit 8' is pretty easy to use its a screen capture program with a editor where you can do the above you mentioned. Latest version might be 8.5 or 9.

[Torplexed]

Photoshop probably looks more complicated than it really is. There are many aspects of the program I have no use for so I just ignore. And they just keep piling in more features in with every new version. But the price is getting outta sight. :nope:

[Chock]

Well, if you fancy Photoshop, I can send you one of the manuals I hand out to people I train on it, it has numerous tutorials in it and is a lot less daunting than the Adobe ones that come with it, which are enough to send you to sleep. Let me know if you want one.

The nice thing about Photoshop is that you can animate with it and export to Flash, so it's good for web stuff as well, which is worth bearing in mind when you consider the price, as it is a lot more than just a program for tarting up pictures, the most recent (CS3) version has much improved selection tools and is also optimised for doing stuff like creating screen animations for mobile devices.

Photoshop may look complex, but bear in mind that all software like that looks complicated when you first see it, but closer inspection reveals that the menus are laid out in a very logical fashion, and to be honest, a lot of it is simply twenty different ways to skin a cat, which is what people find out when I train them on advanced courses in it! Also note that much of the stuff in there is for repro (probably a good fifty percent of the stuff in the program in fact), so you may never have call to use it if you are not producing artwork for print.

Photoshop's CS3 incarnation has seen a decent change to the contrast controls which might prove of interest to you if you are having problems with grayscale images, Adobe have placed intelligent limiters on the brightness and contrast functions so that it is a lot more usable than it used to be, and it is kind of hard to screw things up with it now, although you can put it in 'legacy' mode and have it work like the earlier version if you so desire (this is a bonus for me, as I will now be less likely to come across students who are using the levels and curves for the wrong thing - LOL).

However, this is a good alternative if you don't want to cough up for Photoshop:

http://www.getpaint.net/

:D Chock

[Letum]

Paint Shop Pro:
Excellent Art tools (brushes, chalk, etc)
More user friendly interface
Cheep
Poor transparency and alpha handling

Photoshop:
Steeper learning curve
Great with Alpha and transparency
A bit more expensive
More manuals and tutorials

Gimp:
Free
Excelent Vector tools
Multi Platform

[Kapitan_Phillips]

I recommend Fireworks by Macromedia.

[Skybird]

Paint shop Pro, version 9, which is not the latest, but the last version by the original company before it was swallowed by Adobe, I think. you could get it for smile price at ebay. It is extremely competent, once you have located your most needed functions it is easy to use, and it is reasonably fast. Plus it leaves you plenty of things to discover that you maybe even have not imagined.

the later versions, deriving from the times after JASC software got sold, I have read at amazon were less enthusiastically welcomed by customers. So version nine seems to be the way to go.

[Mush Martin]

Paint shop pro

very intuitive and the helpfile tut's are good.

M:up:

[Dowly]

Photoshop is quite simple to use when you use it for awhile, like already said most of the functions are something you'll never need. But if you just need it for small things then it might be a little too much to pay. I have the PS CS3 and absolutely love it! Helps quite a bit when making composite screenshots to have for example the 'Smart Object' feature that you can use to edit the layer but still you can get everything back with a click of a button, or you can scale the layer down in size without losing any of the quality of whatever is in the layer. And of course, then there's the ability to open up movie files & 3D models, but havent really looked into that yet.

[Kratos]

if its a free programme theres always the gimp

http://www.gimp.org/
(http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html:up:)

[SUBMAN1]

I vote for the Gimp too. I use it for more complex stuff.

For simple stuff, and probably something that you will use more often than not, is the Picture manager than comes on Office 2000, 2003, 2007. I bet it does almost everything you want it to do by the way, and simple is its first name. If it needs to be more complex, load it up in The Gimp.

-S

[Onkel Neal]

I should give gimp a try, how the heck do I install it? I've downloaded the latest version, where's the setup file...:doh:

[Onkel Neal]

Photoshop probably looks more complicated than it really is. There are many aspects of the program I have no use for so I just ignore. And they just keep piling in more features in with every new version. But the price is getting outta sight. :nope:

Which version do you use? Do they sell a previous version at a discount? What do you use for your illustrations? That's a good endorsement :yep:

[kiwi_2005]

With Gimp install its all about compile man, get your l33t skills out and compile that mother:) Although i would of thought there would be a easy window version installation. There must be...


Compile as a normal user using: ./configure && make and then as root make install

Here for info
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/install_help.html#comp-inst



Stable version (2.2.x)
A recent version of pkg-config is needed and you can grab them at http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/ (http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/)
GTK+ 2.4.4 or better (Gimp Toolkit). The GIMP toolkit can be found at ftp://ftp.gtk.org/ GTK+ 2.4.4 also needs the following packages. (Either the version listed or newer)
GLib 2.4.5
Pango 1.4.0
ATK
PangoFT2 a Pango backend that uses FreeType2 (Make sure you have FreeType2 installed before installing Pango). Downloads can be found at http://www.freetype.org/
libart2 Grab the module libart_lgpl out of GNOME CVS or fetch the tarball from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libart_lgpl/ (ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libart_lgpl/)GIMP Compilation and Installation

After grabbing the GIMP distribution, you are ready to compile and install. The main site for the latest offical GIMP distribution is ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/ but you should consider using one of the mirrors listed on the download page (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/).
GIMP makes use of the Gimp Toolkit (GTK+) and other libraries that must be installed first. Look in Requirements above to find out more.
Stable version (2.2.x)
A recent version of pkg-config is needed and you can grab them at http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/ (http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/)
GTK+ 2.4.4 or better (Gimp Toolkit). The GIMP toolkit can be found at ftp://ftp.gtk.org/ GTK+ 2.4.4 also needs the following packages. (Either the version listed or newer)
GLib 2.4.5
Pango 1.4.0
ATK
PangoFT2 a Pango backend that uses FreeType2 (Make sure you have FreeType2 installed before installing Pango). Downloads can be found at http://www.freetype.org/
libart2 Grab the module libart_lgpl out of GNOME CVS or fetch the tarball from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libart_lgpl/ (ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libart_lgpl/)GIMP Compilation and Installation

After grabbing the GIMP distribution, you are ready to compile and install. The main site for the latest offical GIMP distribution is ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/ but you should consider using one of the mirrors listed on the download page (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/).
GIMP makes use of the Gimp Toolkit (GTK+) and other libraries that must be installed first. Look in Requirements above to find out more.
Compile as a normal user using: ./configure && make and then as root make install
If all goes well, a good while later, you will have a brand spanking new GIMP to play with. Unfortunately, it has been rumored that it isn't always that easy. So, here are a few common problems and some solutions ...
For some more specific info, you may want to read the INSTALL (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/INSTALL) file from the main GIMP distribution.
Other Packages


If all goes well, a good while later, you will have a brand spanking new GIMP to play with. Unfortunately, it has been rumored that it isn't always that easy. So, here are a few common problems and some solutions ...
For some more specific info, you may want to read the INSTALL (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/INSTALL) file from the main GIMP distribution.

[jumpy]

Another vote for Gimp here.
It's a little complicated to install as I recall - I went for a windows installer http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

[Torplexed]

Which version do you use? Do they sell a previous version at a discount? What do you use for your illustrations? That's a good endorsement :yep:
The first version I started with was Photoshop 6.0 in 2000. Learned a lot from it. I got Adobe CS3 (creative suite 3)this year which is about 5 versions removed from Photoshop 6.0 and was quite a bit more expensive. Adobe used to put out a product called Photoshop Elements which was a lot cheaper and lacked many of the bells and whistles, but it mainly targeted photography enthusiasts and probably lacked many features that would make it useful in a proper print production work. Actually a earlier version of Photoshop like 6.0 or 7.0 probably would do fine. Many people are still using them. I don't know if they're still available retail however. :hmm:

If you do pick up PS I would recommend one of those generic guide books, or the excellent Photoshop Wow! Book to help learn it with. As Chock mentioned the manuals Adobe puts out with it's products are daunting and dry. I found it easier just to pound buttons and see what worked.

[Chock]

Re: versions of Photoshop.

Photoshop 4 is actually one of the best versions of PS believe it or not, and that's ancient, it has most of the useful features, although a minus point is that it is unstable on XP and probably hasn't got a prayer on Vista.

You can get discounted new copies of Photoshop in a number of ways, very occasionally, an older version will be given away on a Magazine CD/DVD (i.e two or three versions older, and usually tied in with an offer to get a discount on the full latest version), Adobe do 'educational discounts' which come in two flavours (or flavors if you are American). First, anyone in further education can get a discount on any Adobe product, although this is actually quite small, but the plus side is that they do not care what further education you are in, as long as you can prove you are, so you could be at a night school class on car mechanics and still claim the discount. Then you have the full educational discount that is offered to educational establishments, this is a hefty percentage, and is for lecturers, teachers etc, so again, if you can collar a teacher or lecturer and get them to buy a copy on your behalf, you'll get a big discount (thirty percent the last time I checked).

Things to watch out for: Photoshop CS (Creative Suite) is two versions back from current. It does not have the animation palette, so you have to switch to the (included) Image Ready application to do stuff like exporting to Flash as an animation file, although you can actually produce all the stuff for an animation in the CS version and then switch to Image ready. Photoshop CS2 adds the animation palette and some extra filters which are useful for retouching (notably the Vanishing Point filter, which will allow you to clone image areas in perspective). it also added the 'Smart Objects' feature, which enables you to continually resize stuff whilst retaining the original pixel data. CS2 also has better suppport for RAW image negatives, high dynamic range images, and has image stitching capabilities to allow you to create panoramic single images from several shots (the kind you see in virtual tours of U-Boats online, that sort of thing). Photoshop CS3 (the current version) is better optimised for Intel processors and adds a lot of networking and group operations capabilities, although it does actually lose some functionality where creating Flash files is concerned, since Adobe bought Aldus and got control of several web applications in the process and expect their customers to buy those apps too. The Vanishing Point tool got an overhaul in CS3 and the filters became 'non-destructive' although you can get around that in earlier versions by using duplicated layers and adjustment layers, so it's not as big a selling point as perhaps Adobe hoped it would be. Probably the most usable feature in the CS3 version is the smarter image adjustment tools and the new area select tool, which is rare addition to the (standard for years) set of selection tools in Photoshop and very useful if you have to work fast. there are a few other slightly useful features in CS3, such as the statistics palette (useful for remote group working and tracking in animation).

All versions get better at colour profiling as they get newer, so if you envisage using Photoshop for print-ready artwork (say for the Submarine Almanac), then CS3 would be the wisest choice as it handles the latest North American prepress settings as well as the European ISO ones and will of course have a more up to date Pantone colour picker palette.

With regard to learning Photoshop, unless you get some one on one training, probably the best way is to look online, as the vast majority of websites you find with tutorials are the most logical way to learn, in that you can generally see a picture with some effects on it it and think: 'That's what I want to do!', rather than say, searching through the help files and hoping to find the technical name for what you want to achieve. By this I mean, how would you actually know that you wanted to learn about, say, layered opacity masks, if you didn't know what layered opacity mask actually did? this is the problem with the official manuals and the help files, in that they often put the cart before the horse when it comes to learning. There are also quite a few video tutorials on sites like YouTube, but they are often at such a poor resolution that it is difficult to see what is actually being selected by the person doing the tutorial, you also have to keep in mind that there are very many ways to do the same thing in PS, and often you see tutorials on the 'net that will get you there, but not in the smartest or quickest way. This is what Adobe get snotty about when they make people like me take the Adobe Certified Expert exams, so that I am teaching it in the way they want it to be taught, which ironically enough, isn't always the smartest way! There are some tutorials on the Adobe website, but some of them do in fact have errors in them, as in fact do some of the help files in the program itsef (warning to anyone who has a bent copy of PS, if you have it running and go to the Adobe website, expect an unpleasant surprise through the mail, there is lots of security stuff like that in Photoshop, and if you don't believe me, try scanning a banknote and opening the image in PS!)

Wow that was a long post - Help! I'm turning into Skybird!

:D Chock

[fatty]

Another vote for Photoshop here. I used the basic features for a long time to doodle or make designs for websites or whatever. There are a wealth of bells and whistles, and you can steer clear of them, but when you need them they're there. When I started getting serious about photography I really opened up and started exploring the rest of the program i.e. raw manipulation, channels, levels, etc. It's great!

[Skybird]

Unbeatable prices.

http://search.ebay.com/Paint-Shop-Pro-9_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQfromZR40

1 patch required for version 9.

[orwell]

If your looking for something free, I'd vote for Gimp as well. You might also try Paint.net. I experimented with it and it seems pretty powerful.

[Onkel Neal]

Another vote for Gimp here.
It's a little complicated to install as I recall - I went for a windows installer http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

Thanks, jumpy, I dl'ed and installed the Windows version (why would there be any other kind) and I've been gimping along. Oh man, so many things to learn, so many things that are different. I'm trying to learn how to do the same things I can do with Image Composer. So are fairly straight forward, but some Gimp tools are hard to use, compared to IC. For example, in IC, the freehand selection tool worked like this, you could click the point you wanted to start the selection, and then click your way around what you wanted to cut out. In Gimp, it seems to be click and draw, and I can never get the selection the way I want it. Also, in IC, to change the size and shape of something, I could click on it and tilt, stretch, and skew very easily. I'm not having it so easy in Gimp. :cry:

Ah, well, maybe I need to keep working with it and learn how to use it. :roll:

I've got a graphic that needs a little touch up work, anyone want to take a crack at it? Pretty simple, it's a ship hull and I removed the Wolfpack League logo, but I can't smudge or smooth the part where the logo was... I'm so lame. If you want to try, I can send it to you.

thanks
Neal the gimpy artist

[Onkel Neal]

If your looking for something free, I'd vote for Gimp as well. You might also try Paint.net. I experimented with it and it seems pretty powerful.

Cool, I'll have a look at Paint.net too, thanks!

[Chock]

You can fire your problem graphic to me if you want me to have a crack at sorting it Neal. Stick it on an email if you like.

:D Chock

[Dowly]

Should be rather easy job with the clone stamp tool. :up:

[Onkel Neal]

ok, sweet. PM sent, thanks:up:

[Chock]

Neal check your mail, mission accomplished.

Incidentally, I think your difficulties in making the correction were probably because the png file was in 'indexed colour' (which is where the palette of colours is limited to a specific range of tones, usually 256), needless to say this makes it difficult to make subtle corrections to things, so if whatever image editing program you are using can switch modes to RGB, it will be easier for you to do this kind of malarkey. Then, when you are done, you can put it back into indexed colour mode if need be. But be aware that this is not like flipping a switch however, and you do lose some quality if you flip modes like that a lot.

:D Chock

[Onkel Neal]

Neal check your mail, mission accomplished.

Incidentally, I think your difficulties in making the correction were probably because the png file was in 'indexed colour' (which is where the palette of colours is limited to a specific range of tones, usually 256), needless to say this makes it difficult to make subtle corrections to things, so if whatever image editing program you are using can switch modes to RGB, it will be easier for you to do this kind of malarkey. Then, when you are done, you can put it back into indexed colour mode if need be. But be aware that this is not like flipping a switch however, and you do lose some quality if you flip modes like that a lot.

:D Chock

Holy cow, my head hurts.

Ok, thanks, the touch up looks very, very nice. I'll check into the indexed color aspect and see if I can learn it.

Neal

[Onkel Neal]

Digging up an old thread... I think I found my problem with Image Composer and dark colors... I happened to see:woot: my settings were for 16 bit color... I switched it to 32 bit and it seems to have solved the chronic banding of dark colors in screenshots! So far....