Which graphics software ?

[John2]

Hello friends,
One of my friends is willing to learn designing and he want an advice that which sofware to use and which will be the easy one to start with ? as I am also not such a big geek in designing so I want some advices from your side.. I personally have used Photoshop only but dont know which one to refer..

Can you help him ( actually me as he is wanting advice from me .. ops: ) on this.. ?


Thanks in advance.

[Eminem]

I would use Photoshop. However, if you want to use any other softwares, you may use PaintShop Pro which is also a nice software or any other software like Gimp would help you. However, Photoshop is the best software when it comes to designing.

Best of luck.

[sjaguar13]

What kind of designing does your friend want to do? Photoshop is the standard for most rastor images. Rastor images are those that have a set of pixels and the pixels have a color. All web graphics are rastor. If that's the kind of stuff he wants to do, Photoshop is the way to go. If you cannot afford it, Gimp is free and similar enough where picking up Photoshop later isn't too hard.

Unlike rastor, vector images are a set of forulas to redraw the artwork. This is how most images for print need to be done because it allows you to resize the image without any quality loss at all. I prefer Illustrator for these. The problem is vector art is really hard to master without a lot of art skills. It consists of drawing a lot of stuff by free hand. However, this is a great market to get into since not a lot of people can do it well. Also, you can export vector images as rastor, so you can design websites and everything in vector and then export the rastor images to upload. You cannot go from rastor to vector quite as easily. Unfortunately, I haven't found any free vector drawing programs for Windows that were all that great.

If you want to get into some 3D designing or if you want to design websites with some 3D elements, Anim8or is an easy to use 3D program and Blender is a very powerful program. Both of them are free.

Here are some links to the programs:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net
http://www.Anima8or.com
http://www.Blender3D.org

[John2]

Thanks alot you both.. Eminem for suggesting the PaintShop Pro and sjaguar13 for giving such a useful and important information.. i will tell about all these to my friend...

One more question Eminem is the PaintShop Pro free or is it also shareware ?

[sjaguar13]

PaintShop Pro isn't free, but there is a demo available:
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...wnloads/Trials

Version 10 (X) is out now. It used to be owned by Jasc, and now Corel owns it. I haven't used it since Corel bought it, but it wasn't bad. Corel makes pretty good software, Corel Draw (a vector program), so I would assume it's just as good, if not better now.

If you want to go free, your best choice is probably Gimp.

[mercy]

I too learned a lot thro this tread. Esp about the paintpro. Thx guys.

[reilly12]

There so many software’s are available for Image editing but I prefer ReaConverter this is a good user friendly tool as well as designing tool to edit image.

[Jordenclover]

This is the manner by which generally pictures for print need to be finished since it permits you to resize the picture without any quality misfortune whatsoever.
I lean toward Illustrator for these. The issue is vector craft is truly tricky to ace without a great deal of symbolization aptitudes.

[trafficup]

Photoshop is easy to learn and use so its good software for website designing.

[claraK]

Originally Posted by trafficup

Photoshop is easy to learn and use so its good software for website designing.

I tend to join. It's the most suitable idea I think in this case.