Suggested Graphic Designing Program

Almost Everyone has a Graphic Designing program like me I use Paint.net others use Photoshop and more GDP's.......... And just like the title said what is the GDP that you really recommend?

Mine would be Paint.net it's fast and really good for making Banners with a good size.... My brother (Soulmage) uses MS Paint because it's the only one he got. (He's not an artist.. :(...)

As for myself, I'd recommend GIMP as its free and quite good imo.

Besides that, if you don't mind a small monthly fee, you could also try to get into the Photoshop Photography Program to get the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom.

Lightroom actually managed to salvage a lot of otherwise bad photos taken with my phone. They are very powerful tools at your disposal along with Photoshop. Photoshop is more general; Lightroom is specialised for photos.

Nothing beats Paint.NET for its balance of simplicity and power.

Stay far, far away from GIMP if you value your sanity.

I use GIMP, and in my opinion it is one of the better graphic programs. There are a lot of filters, a lot of effects, and - last but not least - it is free.

Team Fail said:

I have Photoshop CS2, you can get it for free from the Adobe site if you sign up. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the latest versions, but it's at least Photoshop.

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This.

If I were you, I would avoid GIMP like the plague. It's not newbie friendly and it's complicated. Photoshop is pretty much the way to go, and since CS2 is free, anything is possible. :P Buuuut, if you haven't done so, you can try out Photoshop CC for 30 days.

There's also an online graphic design program called Pixlr. Their interface is like Photoshop but it doesn't have much to offer, but it has the same basic tools that Photoshop commonly has such as the magic wand, blur, opacity/fill, etc. If you don't like to download and/or if you don't have photoshop nearby when you're not near your computer, this is the quickest getaway to go. :P

I'm oldschool as I use Photoshop 7 for basic photo editing.. while I just recently got GIMP back onto my computer, I really only use GIMP to render .gif images.

Also, I despise Paint.NET.. you cannot edit text once it's made (unless that has changed in recent years), and I often base my image projects around the same files and I'd love to be able to edit text as I go along in my work.

And Photoshop vs. GIMP: in Photoshop, you can keep drop shadows under text without having to delete the drop shadow itself, whereas in GIMP, the drop shadow is rasterized as a layer instead of being a part of the layer itself.

Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator are the two most powerful graphic design programs really. There's little debate on it. If you wish to go into print, you can then use Adobe InDesign or Quark, Adobe Flash for various multimedia such as games, animations, and websites, and so on. The Adobe suite really provides the most powerful tools at your fingertips, it just depends on what you're doing.

If you're not into cracking programs or paying out lots of money, then things like Gimp, Paint.NET, Inkscape, and more, are quite good. Nothing beats the power of an Adobe product when it comes to design, however.

I would recommend taking a look at Wikipedia, specifically these pages. In general, I recommend staying away from software that restricts your ability to freely use, study, redistribute, and modify it. Take a look at some of the software under the "free software" lists (not freeware), try it out, see if it's to your liking. If not, you can always remove it and try another program. Take note that some of the software may not be available for your operating system, especially if you use an operating system that is not also free software. This link will show you if a particular application will run on your operating system.

Abnegation said:

Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator are the two most powerful graphic design programs really. There's little debate on it. If you wish to go into print, you can then use Adobe InDesign or Quark, Adobe Flash for various multimedia such as games, animations, and websites, and so on. The Adobe suite really provides the most powerful tools at your fingertips, it just depends on what you're doing.

If you're not into cracking programs or paying out lots of money, then things like Gimp, Paint.NET, Inkscape, and more, are quite good. Nothing beats the power of an Adobe product when it comes to design, however.

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This.

They are the industry standard as well, however I would say that there are specific programs that are still better at doing one than than the other in my experience. Not only do I stick with the Cs6 suite, but I will dip a layer into Paint Shop Pro 7 for some minor edits from time to time, unless it is a large scale print which I pretty much confine to Illustrator.

It is unfortunate that the Adobe Master suite is so much because I feel more people should use it and it's price barrier can turn many people off of it. Not many people are fortunate enough to get their school to pay for it.

It is funny that I saw this thread today, usually I stick to the GD section, but I saw this and we were just talking about it last night.

twocows said:

In general, I recommend staying away from software that restricts your ability to freely use, study, redistribute, and modify it.

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I'd gladly disagree with this part, since I think the most important thing is probably "can I use this to do what I want without tearing my hair out". What kind of licence something is under isn't too relevant when you don't want to use the program. (Me and GIMP... we're never friends. I decided to live without GIMP for a long time.)

Either way, if one program doesn't suit your needs, there are a bunch of other apps that can fill in anyway. Usually. Me, I roll with my newly-gained subscription to Photoshop Photography Program, so I'm using Photoshop for power, Lightroom for photos, and I'm also keeping Paint.NET for quick-and-dirty stuff.

And I realized how many things I must have missed since Photoshop 7...

If I just need to do something quick; cropping an image, for example, I'll just use MS Paint. If I want to create an image from scratch, or heavily edit something I'll use Paint.net.

Believe it or not, but I always use MS Paint, or Seashore, depending on which Computer I'm working on (mostly even in a mix).

Seashore is basically a simplified Version of The GIMP, with only Tools you need, and the ones you don't need are taken out.
And also, Seashore is a native Mac Application, unlike The GIMP, making working with it an even more pleasure, and like The GIMP, Seashore is available for free, but only for Mac.

MS Paint is especially handy for making Pixel Art, which is the Graphics Style I love the most, anyway.

♪Twiggy♪ said:

I'd gladly disagree with this part, since I think the most important thing is probably "can I use this to do what I want without tearing my hair out". What kind of licence something is under isn't too relevant when you don't want to use the program. (Me and GIMP... we're never friends. I decided to live without GIMP for a long time.)

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If you don't want to use the program, why do you need it to begin with?

Usability is certainly important, but when possible, I think it's best to use software that respects your freedom, especially all other things equal or close to equal. I'm not recommending GIMP specifically, I just provided a list of links to free software that might be helpful is all.

Either way, if one program doesn't suit your needs, there are a bunch of other apps that can fill in anyway. Usually. Me, I roll with my newly-gained subscription to Photoshop Photography Program, so I'm using Photoshop for power, Lightroom for photos, and I'm also keeping Paint.NET for quick-and-dirty stuff.

And I realized how many things I must have missed since Photoshop 7...

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That's fine, I just think that it's better in general to use free software when possible, as people can learn from it, use it, and share it with their friends (who can do likewise) without restriction. Plus, it makes improving the software a lot easier for those so inclined (especially with the rising popularity of crowdfunding software development.

Anyway, I was just trying to provide a list of alternative software that the poster might find useful. Like I said, it's pretty easy to try it out and see for yourself if it's something you'd like to use or not, as it is also free gratis.

twocows said:

If you don't want to use the program, why do you need it to begin with?

Usability is certainly important, but when possible, I think it's best to use software that respects your freedom, especially all other things equal or close to equal. I'm not recommending GIMP specifically, I just provided a list of links to free software that might be helpful is all.

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You don't know whether you hate a piece if software until you actually used it. At least we should be glad that there are alternatives when it comes to a lot of things.

I only use Paint.net only because I don't really edit photos, I just need something that has layering. nothing to complicated and MS Paint doesn't has layering.

twocows said:

If you don't want to use the program, why do you need it to begin with?

Usability is certainly important, but when possible, I think it's best to use software that respects your freedom, especially all other things equal or close to equal. I'm not recommending GIMP specifically, I just provided a list of links to free software that might be helpful is all.

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Actually, even though I'm a big fan of Open-Source, I still agree with Twiggy.
The GIMP only works good on Linux with the Gnome or Xfce Desktop Environment.
On KDE, Windows, and Mac, it either runs like ****, or doesn't run at all.
Besides, The GIMP is a huge bloatware, needlessly heavy.
Why do you think then I prefer Seashore over The GIMP?

For the Mac users who want to try out Seashore: http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/About.html

MKGirlism said:

Actually, even though I'm a big fan of Open-Source, I still agree with Twiggy.
The GIMP only works good on Linux with the Gnome or Xfce Desktop Environment.
On KDE, Windows, and Mac, it either runs like ****, or doesn't run at all.
Besides, The GIMP is a huge bloatware, needlessly heavy.
Why do you think then I prefer Seashore over The GIMP?

For the Mac users who want to try out Seashore: http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/About.html

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You're right Gimp today has 86.1 MB which is really high for me..... It's so effing sloooooowwwwww.....

Maxedoutfreaky said:

You're right Gimp today has 86.1 MB which is really high for me..... It's so effing sloooooowwwwww.....

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You shouldn't worry (too) much about the amount of memory and disk storage an application takes on a modern PC. Most modern OSes should manage app memory usage extremely well, and disk storage is probably a concern only when you're on a very small SSD.

So what?
For a Photo Editor, which is less functional than Photoshop, it's still a lot.
In present days, you can even have Photo Editors of the same amount of functionalities as (and better than) The GIMP, which are much smaller.

MKGirlism said:

So what?
For a Photo Editor, which is less functional than Photoshop, it's still a lot.
In present days, you can even have Photo Editors of the same amount of functionalities as (and better than) The GIMP, which are much smaller.

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That, I'd agree with you. My point is that with modern PCs, one shouldn't be too concerned with the use of system resources. I'd only be concerned if something's pegging the CPU or causing excessive paging.