Site Reference Forums

I use Paint Shop Pro - does all I need at a fraction of the Photoshop price.
I find that none of the free ones on the web are much good

Well, my favorite graphics tool is IrfanView: http://www.irfanview.net/

IrfanView won't do everything that the more sophisticated programmes will do. In fact IrfanView is a graphics viewer, not an image manipulation tool. Maybe when it first came out, IrfanView was just a viewer, but with the improvements with each new version, it's now much more than a viewer.

Irfanview will batch process, making many edits at the same time. It is a thumbnail generator, that is, it will create your html thumbnail page and image pages, ready for the web.

I use Irfanview to upload images from an SD or CF card.

It creates slideshows with MP3 of wave files if you wish. You can burn the slideshow to CD and the programme is also included so you can shove it into another computer and the slide show will play.

Irfanview can use 8BF plugin files. These are made as Photoshop plugins. Some can be downloaded free.

The latest version has a small paint box with a great straightening tool to straighten crooked horizons.

But I mainly use IrfanView for crop, resize, adjust colour, contrast, darkness. It also has a simple print interface.

Where IrfanView runs out, I use the Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/

Regards,
Laurie.

It used to be 3d studio max for everything; but it's a bit on the expensive side

Fireworks, but would love to know how to use photoshop properly

If you want open source, try the gimp - available for windows and unix systems and seems pretty powerful

I started out on photoshop, but lately I've been using Corel X3...... which seems WAY better.

It does seem really strange at first tho, as everything seems to function from a different perspective than photoshop. But when you get the hang of it, it's extremely powerful. Well worth the price we paid.

Photoshop CS2 (hey, I'm not paying for it the boss is), but I have used GIMP as well.

Last edited by Steven_A_S (2007-12-21 10:24:44)

Steven_A_S wrote:

I have used GIMP as well.

If I didn't know what that was I'd be worried...picturing a leather outfit with zip by the mouth...

I never would have pictured that based on the word "GIMP", are you sure you weren't just thinking about it before reading my response?

Photoshop. And for vectors, Corel Draw and Illustrator. Works well for me.

Seven: I'm not sure what the most recent version of Photoshop is, but I think we have version 6. So that might have something to do with it. To answer your question, I do more catalog layout work and PDF type stuff than regular imaging. So the whole Corel package works awesome for me. I can edit stuff on the fly, do vectoring, etc.

I'm sure Photoshop has some sort of package thingy majiggy by now tho, and I only got Corel because it was recommended to me by our outside graphics guy / photographer. He used other tools tho also, like CGI type stuff, etc..... some of the higher end, more elite hocus pocus.

After getting used to Corel, I found that it just seems to handle imaging much better. Don't know what it is per say, but I can just come up with a better end-result, in half the time it took me in photoshop.

We also had an old copy of illustrator around here somewhere, and I found that to be a complete pile of crap. Extremely clunky, and barely did a darn thing. I can do it ALL with Corel, and it's pretty easy to learn on-the-fly, while creating professional looking pieces.

You did mention that you liked using macro's for certain things.... Well, I don't know how to set up that sort of thing, nor would I use it, as just about every project I start is completely unique from the last. I just did a help search in Corel, and it looks like there is something in there for VBA Macro's. Is that the same thing you're doing?

Someone like yourself with greater knowledge of graphics software would be a better judge of Corel, as you seem to have superior experience in the field. But from a newb standpoint like mine, I found that Corel could do everything I ever wanted, plus more, very quickly, with great results. If you got the extra cash laying around (yeah... right? hahah), you should look into getting X3 and giving us all a good professional review.

Too late for me to upgrade, as we already dropped the cash on Corel. Trouble with good image editing software is that you don't always get to try out a full blown version to compare with others.

Would be much easier if the software was much cheaper....