Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
The GIMP/PhotoFiltre/Paint.net/etc., thoughts...
Hirudin:
After trying PSP XI a little; I didn't notice any severe problems and am pretty impressed. I even created a cool CD image (which I'm pretty proud of) that I'm using for a couple icons in Directory Opus.
The GIMP/PhotoFiltre/Paint.net/etc., thoughts...
CD3.pspimage.rar (223.14 kB - downloaded 330 times.)
I think PSP is one of the most intuitive paint programs out there (I haven't tried them all though, but I'm attempting to). But I must say that I was missing some of the features I managed to discover in The GIMP during it's 1 day on my computer. The most notable would be selection constraints in The GIMP. By holding Shift, Ctrl, and/or Alt you can force the selection tool to be constrained to different shapes/have different origin points. So, if you're using the 'Circle' selection tool, you can hold one key to make the cursor the center of the circle, by holding another you can force the selection to be a perfect circle, and by holding both you can do both. VERY handy IMO!
Darwin:
I have PSP 9, X, and XI and *just* uninstalled X, so still have 9 and XI loaded. I also use Photofiltre for quick jobs as it opens so quickly but I do find PSP much more intuitive so use it if I am doing more complex manipulation of graphics. If I didn't have licences for all of these I'd probably be looking very closely at Paint.net, which looks really good.
digitalzen:
Since I use Picasa2 for indexing, I tend to use it for simple editing if it's open (love that straightening tool) or FastStone Image Viewer, which is my default viewer.
Beyond that, I've tried the Gimp, PhotoFiltre, Paint.NET and the free version of Serif Photo Plus (v. 5, I think). I'd be inclined to stick with Picasa if it had a cloning tool, except for the very rare occasions when I need layers. However, I find that for "serious" editing PhotoShop Elements suits very well.
People assume that Elements is simply a dumbed-down version of PS, intended to hook users for upgrades. That's not the case at all. PSE is a full-featured program that will do 99% of what amateurs and casual pros need, and the learning curve is nowhere near as steep as PS itself. It even has a few features that haven't made it into PhotoShop yet.
It's not freeware, but given that it's available all over the Web for under fifty bucks and retails for under a hundred, it kicks a lot of butt for the money. I do some fairly serious stuff with RAW, etc. and occasionally layers, and I haven't found anything yet that it won't handle easily. The auto adjustments, BTW, are spot-on with my Epson printer. I rarely do manual tweaks any more.
mitzevo:
Photoshop is very good, and very expensive.
Looking for Photoshop tutorials? Google.
GIMP is also very good, but the learning curve is huge compared to Photoshop
Looking for GIMP tutorials? Google.
Paint.NET I executed once and never looked back - because I didn't have time :)
belkira:
Anyone tried CinePaint?
http://www.cinepaint.org/
Looks interesting, but I am afraid I don't use PhotoShop enough to make a comparison.
Also if on linux this one looks interesting:
http://www.koffice.org/krita/
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version