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.

[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/

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

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

[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/instal...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/
• 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/

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.
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/
• 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/

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.
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 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 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]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

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

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.