United3dArtists Archive

hey all

Anyone know of a really nice well-rounded program similar to Photoshop that is FREE? (I just can't afford to purchase anything right now). I'm looking for the usual options especially alpha channel creation ability and the ability to make/use masks etc. I've seen a couple programs including one called Gimp but I don't want to download and try until I asked on here first. All help greatly appreciated.

kind regards
Rob

try paintnet - http://www.getpaint.net/

or purchase PaintShop Pro which is very powerfull and very cheap! (imho better than photoshop, only CMYK is not supported)
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0

or Gimp is a way to go ;)

http://www.gimpshop.com/index.shtml"

I also like Paint Shop Pro but it is not free.

I haven't used Gimp but W!zard, who is very skilled and knowledgeable about 3D and 2D, likes gimp very much.

W!zard doesn't post much here now. His site: http://www.wizitch.com"

There are a number of really terrific free tools available for 2d work.

On the raster based tools front:

Paint.net is already listed here. I have used it a few times just to try it out and it is very nice to work with and can produce some great work.

Project Dogwaffle is a painting program that offers a freeware version. The interesting tool in Dogwaffle is a brush creation method referred to as optipustics. It creates a particle system based brush and can be configured to do amazing hair and fur effects.

On the heels of Dogwaffle is Artweaver.

The GIMP is a great tool but takes some getting used to. The gimpshop project mentioned above is an attempt to create a photoshop ui on it.

The thing to look for in choosing these tools is the ability to use photoshop filters on the images.

Another area too look into is tools that advertise themselves as photo retouching tools. They are less paint programs and more image manipulation.

Tools to search for here include: Irfanview, Vicmans photo editor, and Pixia.

If you want some interesting vector based tools I strongly suggest Inkscape.

More later...

irfanview is more a viewer, not an editor... if you want a good editing featured viewer, select XNview or Faststone view, these are better than irfan.

Out of all of those, when I used them, I liked GimpShop the best. It's a different interface, but quite powerful. I used PaintShop for years and it couldn't support certain blending modes, forgot which ones (you know that modes like darken, multiply, linear dodge, etc.) One nice thing about PaintShop Pro is it has a huge amount of plug-ins available and a huge support group.

Since the GimpShop supports as I recall multi-pass renders from the Model side of tS7 side, I would go with that. Nothing like touching up your objects, shadows and etc. in post production.

theres also this one here http://www.rw-designer.com/image-editor" , as far as I know the image editor is free, some of the other tools are pay for or donation.

After this tread has produced many recommendations maybe you should make a poll thread with all the recommendations so people can vote and we will find out which is thought to be the best.

The best one is the one that gets you the most profit and turnaround in the longrun
I payed about 1000 $ for my Photoshop 6 full version about 8 years ago and still use it today.
Probably my most used software of all and has earned me lots of money......... much much more then it costed.
I have tried a lot of different pieces of 2d software I keep coming back to Photoshop.
Its the industry standard and for a good reason !
Peter

Good point from Rayman. If you are using it to make money anyway.

If you do a poll like I recommended above be sure to describe what you want from the program and what you will use it for. That way people will know to vote for the software which they think best suits your needs and not necessarily for the one best suited to their wants or needs.

Next version of GIMP will enable you to choose if you want to have the "classic" look of GIMP with several windows or a more "Photoshop" look like the GimpShop software mentioned.
Apparently this adjustment of GIMPs interface is rather good - I haven't tried it myself yet but it might be something to look forward to.

Btw, with the new version of GIMP we also finally will have a new framework for GIMP internally so now the development of 32bit colour and CMYK can finally start!

I use my 10 years old software (micrografx picture publisher) and it is enough for me.
I have also photoshop cs2 but just if i need to read some special file from customers (quadri, 64 bits colors, etc...).

I've heard good things about Aviary. http://aviary.com/home"

Also, her is a comparison of 15 online photo editors. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10170333-2.html"

Wow, thanks everyone for all the suggestions. Choices, choices, I feel lost in the shuffle though, hehe. I tried Paintnet and I don't think its going to do what I want it to do. I don't like the way it makes masks and the way it handles transparency's seems odd to me. It seems instead of "actually" cutting something out of a pic (say a bird for example) its method seems to be to make a bounding box around the bird, a square, etc, and make everything in that square transparent except the bird of course (and that might work for an alpha channel texture, but I mean it keeps a square around the bird or whatever it is your working with...or is that the way all the programs do it? I can't remember exactly.) and thats not going to work. So when you place that bird or whatever it is into another image you have this square and you have to hope that it matches the other pics background or else your screwed. Now I know that you can make the transparency match better but it just seems tedious when compared to photoshop or photo-paint. Their forum doesnt seem to understand the concept of alpha channel textures either, kind of odd for 2d image manipulation program users, dontcha' think?
In the past I've been so used to the way Corel Photo-paint and photoshop makes masks and such that I guess I'm looking for something that works pretty much exactly like that. I do know about paint shop pro and have looked at it on ebay and it is affordable..........just not for me right now.
Still looking for suggestions.

kind regards
Rob

I have the Adobe Suite, which includes PhotoShop CS3-extended, After Effects, Premier, Flash, Illustrator and etc.

But, for fast work and fun to use, I often go to Xara Xtreme. It's a very powerful vector program that can do some really nice work, really fast. It also has a extremely good support group at talkgraphics.com loaded with professionals, artists and very helpful people. There is also a Zone web collection ran by a guy that has hundreds of tutorials covering everything - for free!

Xara Xtreme comes in standard and professional versions. I use the standard as the professional version has more features like layers, enhanced printing, exports, Web stuff and etc, that I don't really need.

But for 2D graphics work, it's absolutely the best I've every used. Excellent work flow imo.

The main site is here:

http://www.xara.com/us/products/xtreme/ ... nAodLBiLIw"

Videos are here:

http://www.xara.com/us/products/xtreme/tutorials-demos/"


You were writing about masks earlier, Xtreme has a way of doing that by using a line to mark around the image and then it becomes a separate object.

Here's a video about cutting a cow out of a photograph, quite handy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8XgHkZo1J8"

Xtreme also can make animated flash, GIF's, export PDF, AI and EPS file formats.

Great program for the price.

hey I quite like the xara... but i dont get it... the linux version is free, mac version will be free but win version costs money? :)

bitkar wrote:hey I quite like the xara... but i dont get it... the linux version is free, mac version will be free but win version costs money?

Support, I would suppose? Linux is community supported which can be who knows? Haven't heard about the Apple development.