photo software ?

Which is the best one to use for clothes designing, bearing in mind im a tightwad with the cash.

Thanks

Gimp....free

I'm the oddball I use Microsoft Image Composer and PS.. But I hear that Gimp does work well.. So I'd follow that advice..

You can always go to www.tucows.com and do a search..

You can use Photshop brushes with the more recent versions of Gimp too, so that's pretty cool.

This question has been asked and answered about a million times, just so you know. Here's a quick rundown of the most popular choices:

1. Photoshop - THe industry standard, and hands down the most powerful image editor/creator, and arguably the most well documented program of any type, on this planet. The latest version allows you to paint directly onto 3D models, with the entire tool set at your disposal. If you've got $1000 to spend, and you're looking for the absolute best of the best, Photoshop is your man.

2. Paintshop Pro - The best bang for the buck among commercial image editors/creators. At a cost of only $100, it's tool set is quite impressive. It's nowhere near as well documented as Photoshop, and it's certainly not as powerful, but it's still an excellent program.

3. GIMP - Arguably the world's second most powerful image editor/creator, behind Photoshop. It delivers an enormous amount of power, absolutely free, which is great. Unfortunately, however, its interface is far from great. Fans of it will swear up and down that it's intuitive and easy to use, and that its interface is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but those people are relatively few and far between. It takes a certain personality type to fall in love with GIMP. For most people, it's quite a struggle at first. Documentation for GIMP has gotten considerably better over the past year or two, but it's still not in the same league as Photoshop's documentation.


Whatever program you choose, let me give you the same advice I give everyone. DO NOT attempt to learn the program itself at the same time as you're learning to texture. The former has to come before the latter. There's absolutely no way around that. No one can learn both subjects at the same time, no one.

Learn first by doing 2D projects only. Don't even think about anything for 3D until after you've mastered the basics of your program of choice. Only after you've reached a strong comfort level (which for most people takes at least several weeks) should you then begin the process of learning to texture for 3D.

Trust me. I've been teaching this stuff for a long time. Don't try to put the cart before the horse or you'll experience a painful lesson in frustration. Take it one step at a time, just like everyone else who's ever learned to do what you ultimately want to do.

That's never the answer anyone wants to hear, of course. People always want instant gratification. But that's not how it works. Approach this with the proper degree of discipline and patience or don't do it at all. Whether you plan on being a casual hobbyist or a professional, the learning process is the same. Respect that, and you'll do great. Try to cut corners and jump ahead, and you'll suffer for it in the long run.


I"d recommend you download the free 30-day trial of Photoshop, and invest in a good book on the program. Go to your local Walden Books or Barnes N' Noble's, and you'll find dozens of Photoshop books to choose from. They've all got basically the same information, so don't worry so much about the content as about the author's teaching style. Peruse through a few, and pick an author who seems to speak your language. Then spend the next four weeks diving in, and doing all the exercises in the book.

Whether or not you ultimately decide to stick with Photoshop or go with one of the others, I still recommend using Photoshop as your first learning tool. Since it's been such a standard for so long, most other graphics programs are modeled around it. If you're comfortable with PS, you can learn almost any other image editor very quickly. (I learned Paintshop Pro well enough to teach it competently in less than one day, for example, since I already knew Photoshop so well.) You'll find that it's much easier to start with PS, and then transition to something else than it is to go the other way around.

thanks all, and thanks chosen, good advice well heeded.