Hiya,
I’d like 2 play with pics and designs, but photoshop scares me…cuz i find it very hard to learn…
is there any software better and lighter than photoshop which is also easy to use and understand…
thanx
ashu
Paint?
No, seriously… If you want to get yourself into professional image manipulating, you should really consider photoshop as your main option. Then after that, you can look around for other solutions.
Why?
Because (literally), every still (and some animated) graphics display you’re looking at todays, there’s always photoshop in it. Whether it’s just a plain simple smiley icon, Nokia’s advertising, or forum user’s avatar, 95% of it came out of photoshop.
And to ease your pain… Photoshop is NOT scary at all.
You need to keep these in mind, as learning how to use photoshop, is similar the effect to train yourself in computer programing logics. Its the basic. You’ll learn layering, blurring, opacity changing, and so on…
Try searching “photoshop tutorial” on Google, and you’ll be amazed just how easy the tutorial is. Most of them comes in a full graphics sample, describing the step-by-step tutorials.
Take this link for example: www.phong.com. It’s one of the oldest photoshop tutorial on the net.
There you’ll see the tutorial been split into various category, like basic, advanced, etc. The basic will quickly hook you for sure.
The best thing of photoshop tutorial on the net today, is that they will get you started as soon as possible, as most of them skips the technical note. Such as; what is a layer?
…instead they put you in the cockpit, and let you harness its power immediately. Thus resulting a deeper understanding, rather than forcing you to memorize every ounce of it, piece by piece.
And here’s some bonus for reading my note so far:
-. Eyes on design
-. Good tutorials - Last page, contains the basic
-. EZ Photoshop
-. Ghosting technique
-. Advanced styling
-. Creating a fake miniature picture
Hi wisanggeni,
thanx for ur great help (:CLP)
I don’t wanna get into professional stuff, but i will check out the tutorials for sure…
thanx again…
:■■■■
ashu
Hi there ashu,
If you don’t intend to work with image manipulation professionally, I still consider Photoshop as a nice program to work with (but it’s veeeery expensive!). One program that immediately popped up in my head as a simple - and free - option, is Paint.NET. I haven’t tried it myself, but you may want to check it out. 
(Requires Microsoft .NET Framework)
Personally I’ve worked as a student (civil engineering & architecture) with Photoshop. Now my final semester is coming, with a thesis work. Since I don’t know whether I’ll have the option to use Photoshop, either now or later (professionally), I’ve switched to a free open source program: The GIMP. It’s not really as powerful as Photoshop, but it’s more advanced than Paint.NET and I’m actually very impressed of it. Unfortunately many people, including me, thinks that the interface is not as simple and logic as Photoshop’s. And you wanted simplicity, right? You might want to check it out anyway.
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
(Requires GTK+ Runtime Environment)
Good luck!
/LA
Thanx, I’ll check it out… :■■■■
ashu
Thanx user4…
:■■■■
ashu
I would recommend GIMP which was posted above, it is a decent photo program from what I’ve heard, and I have some friends who use it and come out with very, very good images with it, and it’s opensource and free
Yes…GIMP looks interesting…
The Gimp is a very good program but I don’t think you’ll find it any easier than Photoshop to use. I must admit I go along with LeoniAquila in thinking Photoshop is more intuitive and simple to use. The best way to learn P/Shop is to just jump in the deep end and start swimming.
Photoshop-users who try out GIMP will often tell you how “non-intuitive” the GIMP UI is …
Many GIMP users feel exactly the same way the first time they use Photoshop …
So, if you don’t have any experience with either of those programs
then go for GIMP and use the money you saved to buy a monster-screen
and a good graphics-tablet
Serif PhotoPlus. A decent image/photo-manipulation program, better (IMO) than paint.net (I’ve used both). Simple, good enough if you’re just playing around with things. I made my avatar in PhotoPlus.
Only thing with it is that the default file-type is proprietary. In order to save as a jpg, png, or gif you have to Export it. This is easy enough to do, from the File menu. From that point on (if you open to re-edit, or if you open a standard image file to start with) you just select “save original as” to avoid the default file extension.
LM
As for GIMP, they have a new release called 2.4.1.
Does anyone know if there is a tool like the little hand in Photoshop, so you can pan (I think that’s the correct word)? The little hand, which you can drag around (navigate) in an image you’ve zoomed in to? I’m asking because I haven’t used the GIMP in a few months now, sure I can install it and check, but if anyone happens to know… thanks
/LA
edit: ahhh I’m stupid, they even have all the help files online, I can check there.
I use Gimp but there is also http://www.gimpshop.com/
GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.
Paint.Net has few good filters but lacked few options I needed. Anyway It has a lot of potential
Another good tool is http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html never tested It but is a freeware alternative to Corel Painter
I decided to give GIMP a shot. The latest version does have the feature I asked for, though you can’t chose the hand from the toolbar but just like in Photoshop you can navigate by pressing the space bar (when zoomed in). This is great.
There is another thing that I think is important: path handling. Maybe I was too quick, but unfortunately GIMP doesn’t seem to handle paths as well as Photoshop. Nudging, moving etc. - I feel that one tool is missing: the very ordinary mouse pointer which let’s you select paths and edit their points. This is even better in Adobe Illustrator (naturally, Photoshop wasn’t really intended for vector graphics I think).
I really think Adobe Photoshop (and Illustrator) are truly fantastic programs to work with. I’ve really given GIMP a chance before, maybe it deserves a new one but I’m skeptical… (though I’m forced to through out Photoshop from March next year to be legal).
/LA
LA, if you’re doing vector graphics, you might look at Inkscape (if you haven’t already).
LM
Yep. It’s good enough but It cannot embed bitmap images in the files. :-\ they could at least zip all the necessary dependencies and open zipped files :-X
Any people with “drawing” skills out there with some time to spare?
http://systrayplay.free.fr/
STP is an mp3 player with a history that goes back to the days of Windows 98. The current developer took over after the first abandoned the program some years ago. He has been looking for someone to update the looks of the program for a long time. Unfortunately not many people seem to know about\use STP… It doesn’t have a real GUI. I think it only has a few icons and a small bmp file.
Any volunteers?
Thanks, I did take a look a couple of months (?) ago, you recommended it already then. Perhaps it’s worth another shot. Now I’m stuck with the .ai format (Adobe Illustrator) though, so we’ll see what happens. I also tried Scribus (open source, free), but that didn’t work either.
gibran, no embedding of bitmap files? Hmm, that’s quite essential.
/LA
Q: Is there anything better than photoshop?
A: Yes, the real deal.
Sorry, had to. (:TNG)