Good Graphics Program?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Im looking for a good value/money graphics program, that would allow me to do things such as make font look like fire..or make the fonts color fade (as in become lighter or darker from one side to the other..or from top to bottom, etc. ;-)).

Not looking to become a web designer, but I think some basic graphics skills would definitely help in a lot of areas...say in a year or so Im gonna make an offer to somebody who doesnt have a website for their small business, yet and suggest I make them a site for free + do SEO for them....they will not know, that web design hardly plays a role in SEO, but if I dont have a couple of such skills down theyll think I got no SEO skills, either lol...

[mcanerin]

The gold standard is Photoshop - but it's pricey.

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) is an excellent and FREE alternative. It's very good and available on a number of platforms, including Windows.

Ian

[Marcia]

Paintshop Pro used to be owned (and was developed) by Jasc and was great. Not so great now that Corel bought them out, for example the manual is very limited and there aren't any newer features that make it worth the difference.

I bought PSP10 and do not like it - PSP8 was just fine, came with the complete manual - and simple tutorial books are available for way lower prices if you look around. See if you can find the older version at Amazon, it's cheaper and works just fine.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

The oldest version I could find was Paint Shop Pro 9...still from Jasc, though.

Would Paint Shop give me any advantage over GIMP? I mean can it do any nice little tricks, that GIMP can't do or wouldn't it really matter?

Would it be easy to transfer from one graphics program to another or are different techniques/skills needed?

P.S.: I feel like graphics would really be sort of important, b/c I think most people place a lot of emphasis on the first impression and how good something looks..and would have absolutely no idea, that in order to be a succesful SEO graphics aren't that important really ^^.

[Marcia]

If PSP9 was still from Jasc, then buy it - since it was before Corel stripped the guts out in their documentation, trying to make it like it's nothing more than a photo editor. Not so - it's full featured and WAY, way more.

IMHO you should buy it without a moment's hesitation, before it's no longer available, if you actually are serious about web development - unless you're willing and able to pay the price for Photoshop.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

So you dont think gimp can compare to Paintshop? Or dont you know it? just wondering because i went to ciao.de and dooyoo.de (i think they got .co.uk versionsin English, too) and everybody said great things about gimp...actually I was told the same thing on another SEO forum...

...just not trying to spend more money than I need ;-) but if Paintshop really got some advantages Ill order it tomorrow.


Oh yeah, merry christmas btw ;-)

[Marcia]

Merry Christmas to you too newkid, but you'll find a lot of answers to your questions by yourself if you do a website of your own and download trial versions of different software to try out for yourself.

[fotoviva]

IMHO you just can't beat Photoshop. Yes it's pricey but you are only limited by your imagination really, there's just so much to it! You can get PS Elements which is much cheaper and might do what you want?