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

[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

[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/

[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...

[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