Since you're already using Photoshop by the sound of it, I think there's a feature built into Photoshop (I think it was added in version 7, if not in CS2) for making tiled backgrounds.

I haven't really played with it myself (if only I had the time to read through the whole PS manual and learn all the features!) so I don't know how well it will work. From a quick search through the help file it looks like the feature is called "The Pattern Maker filter", but it's possible I've found the wrong thing. :)

I get the impression it is somewhat automatic so it'll probably work well for certain things, like grass textures where you can safely blend parts together, but not for others where you need more structure to the repetition.

Something I miss way back from Deluxe Paint on the Amiga was the tiled painting mode where you'd define a tile size and then everything you did to the image was repeated in each tile. That was great for making repeating backgrounds since you could paint them directly without having to work out how the overlap would look. In Photoshop, unless there's something I don't know about, you'd have to pain the tile once, then offset it by 50% width and height and make the edges match up, then repeat if you messed up the other edges in the process, until done.

In other words, imagine the case of photoshop.  Ideally, as long as they don't have to provide you with support, they aren't negatively effected if 30,000 high schoolers have pirated copies of photoshop and learn how to use it.  In fact it helps them by establishing a more dominant user base and trained users who may eventually buy the program.  But they can't "officially" give out those copies of photoshop or charge $5 for them, because they need to be able to charge the pros $500 for it.

-mouser

Although it may have been one bloke who thought of this on his own, and not Adobe's company policy or whatever, I have heard a story about an Adobe trainer going to a university media course to show people how to use Adobe's stuff who also showed them where to get pirate copies. (I heard this from a friend who was in the training session. I've heard similar stories second hand, too.) Clearly it is in Adobe's interests for people who can't afford their stuff to use it anyway and they seem aware of it. (As are Microsoft judging by their recent quote.)

Ignoring Adobe's interests, though, I think that if you can't afford Photoshop then you should use something else. Use something free if you want or buy something cheap. Hopefully by supporting the cheaper products they will get better and better, which is good for everyone (except Adobe).

That said, I can afford Photoshop and the last time I checked (which was many years ago) all of the alternatives were horrible. I don't like having warez on my machine now that I'm a working man rather than a kid/student with no money, so I still bought Photoshop.

That brings up another idea: Should software should be free for kids and students? I don't know how they would prove their age/status or how it would be enforced, nor what would happen when they grew up and all their programs became illegal (maybe they could keep them but upgrades would cost full price). I just remember being a kid who couldn't afford to buy everything but still loved playing around with computers and powerful software. I guess there's more free/open-source stuff for kids to mess around with now, and they've got the free time to really get into that stuff, so maybe things are different to when I was growing up.

If kids should get free/cheap software, should poor people? Should software cost a percentage of your income? Heh. Actually, why is this question even about software and not about products and prices in general? If only money more accurately reflected what a person deserves.

Over the last nine years, since I graduated, pretty much everyone I've worked with has been fairly well off. Not talking in particular about where I'm working right now (although it has happened once or twice there, too), but it really bugs me when I hear people boasting in the office about how they've got a pirate copy of XYZ or modded their console so they can download games or whatever. These people could buy all of that stuff legitimately without any lifestyle hit whatsoever and it's made even worse by the fact that we're all writing/supporting software for a living just like those they're ripping off. (Nobody can pirate the software I/we write at work because it's custom software that's only of use to our company. I'm guessing people's attitudes to piracy would be different if we were working for a commercial software house.)

It's like people forget why they're nicking stuff and, once they're able to afford to buy things properly, they don't realise it's time to change their ways and support the people who make the software/games they use and enjoy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti-pirate nazi who would shop his mother to FAST or FACT or ACT or FAT FIST F**ERS or whatever they're called now; it just offends me that well-off people can be so proud about gratuitously ripping off fellow software developers. Sure, I modded my own Xbox for music/video playback in the lounge -- XBMC rocks -- and, even though I thought I wouldn't, I ended up downloading a couple of games since it was so easy and there were some I wanted to try but wasn't sure enough about to buy. In the end I never got around to even trying most of the stuff I downloaded. Not surprising since I wasn't *that* interested in those titles, by definition. The things that I tried and liked I bought, though, just like I bought Doom 3 for the PC even though I had already finished a pirate copy of the game two weeks before its UK release. (There was no way I was going to hold off downloading a copy when everyone in the USA was talking about it but fair was fair and Id/Activision still got my money.)

How would you account for Linux then? What about Gimp, Open Office, Azureus, Utorrent?

-Nosh

Azureus and Utorrent aren't big/complex enough to be sold commercially, IMO, especially with so many other good, free and almost identical programs for doing the same job.

Open Office is one of the examples of what I mentioned where a free/open program was created and funded by a company with an agenda. (In this case, Sun, wanting to eat into Microsoft's Office market share. Sure, people can now contribute changes but the suite wouldn't exist at all if Sun hadn't paid full-time people to write Star Office.)

Linux and The Gimp are indeed examples of complex, powerful free software from an open-source model, where (as far as I know) lots of people have managed to collaborate and be organised enough to build something that competes with commercial products (to some degree). There aren't many other examples, though, at least that I know of. Perhaps, with stuff like Ubuntu, Linux is even showing signs that it has people willing to turn a large, powerful open-source product into something user-friendly and polished. I don't personally like The Gimp but maybe it's another example (I'm not familiar enough with it to have a fair opinion, I just found it a bit weird, not just compared to Photoshop but compared to what I expect from a GUI app on Windows).

My point wasn't that it never happens but that it's rare and I don't see any signs that it's going to become so common that commercial software ceases to exist. For a complex program to be polished and commercial quality someone usually has to get paid to do the boring stuff, if not just because it's boring then because it takes a lot of time and effort which people don't have if they're busy doing something else to earn a living. Polish needs consistency and it's difficult for lots of people contributing small individual efforts to pull it off. Linux is now popular enough that, to use a bad analogy, so much shit's being thrown at it that the good bits will stick (even if it takes years and years to happen), plus lots of people are paid to work on Linux full-time by companies that make money from Linux in other ways. I might be wrong but I think Linux is pretty unique example.

Of course, it goes without saying that commercial software isn't necessarily good, powerful or polished. One example proves this all by itself: <SPIT> Lotus Notes <SPIT>

What really does annoy me is when people do try to sell those small, simple, spare-time software products.

-Me

Just to clarify, I mean when people sell them individually for more than a couple of dollars/quid. I wasn't having a dig at the DonationCoder concept which I think is pretty cool.