Adope Photoshop elements 5.0

Hello,

I want to learn making clothing including the type that's using alpha channels, but I wanted to know if Phtoshop elements 5.0 is any good at it ??
Or is there a beter program Then P elem. 5.0 expt for P CS2 ?

Becaurse I think Photoshop is a bit to expensive to buy It'arround 899 euro for the UK version.

Greetz,

GIMP is free and what I use. You may have to learn a bit, but probably not $800 worth of difference.

PSE will work, but it takes some trickery to get it to do what you want. Check the transparency guide, stickied at the top of the texturing forum for the how-to on alpha channels for it.

As Renee said, GIMP is far more powerful than PSE, almost as powerful as Photoshop in fact, but it's a hard program to learn. Its interface was designed by programmers for programmers, not by artists. It's kind of the oddball in the graphics programs family.

If you're on a PC, Paint Shop Pro is another decent choice. Its pricing is comparable to PSE, but it's a lot more powerful.

I hate it say that since I'm such a dedicated Adobe fanboy, but PSE isn't a great program. It rides on the Photoshop name. However, it is NOT Photoshop. It's cosmetically similar, but functionally, it's pretty lacking. As I said, it will do the job, but be prepared to spend time learning to trick it into doing certain things that it doesn't want to do, alpha channels being a prime example.