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Hello ladies and gentleman. Well I've quickly found out that best software programs won't work as I intended and even though I'm more knowledgeable than at least 70% of the people here it really comes down to preference and even testing programs for performance or features isn't enough to convince people that there is a better program that the one they have been using for years.
So I'm going to be putting 2 or even 3 programs of each category and do small explanations on them with their pros and cons.
So let me start with images/photo software programs:
FastStone image viewer is a sort of image viewer/manager. While using it, it seems to me its more suited for image management rather than just raw viewing, but it has nice features like setting up brightness, hue, RGB levels and adding some other basic after effects. You can obviously resize images, remove red-eye effect and things like that.
The program is failry light, but its not the lightest one and its UI is not the best.
Picasa is an image management software from Google that lets you find, edit and share your images. The biggest quirk is that it requires you to have a Google account for some of its features. Anyways its got all the basic image manipulation tools like hue, saturation, red-eye, auto contrast and stuff like that.
Its not the most powerful image editing tool, but its easy to work with and generally gets the job done for simple file editing and sharing.
IrfanView is my personal favorite. I usually keep 3 image programs on my PC, a simple image viewer which is IrfanView, a picture manager and a fairly powerful picture editor.
IrfawView is very lightweight, supports most formats out there, there is a plug-in that supports all formats known and has all the basic image editing features one can possibly need for fast and basic image manipulation. Its very fast and easy to use for just pure picture viewing.
Now lets go to image editing or creating.
Gimp is a image manipulation program or if you want to call it image editor. In lames terms its a more powerful version of your image viewer and has more robust features and effects to apply to your images.
Think of Photoshop made lighter and free. While I won't suggest any other program for professional image design apart from photoshop or corel programs, this is a program for all those that want some less sophisticated images or quicker image editing with enough features to really do what you want.
Personally Gimp UI isn't the best one, its kind of clunky and old style looking, it reminds me of all those old programs from 2000 to 2005 basically. It really needs some modernizing and optimizing, though its been slowly but surely working in that directing, while the UI is pretty reliable and easy to understand.
PaintNet like Gimp is an image manipulation program. Its basically stripped down photoshop or to put it in percentages about 75% of photoshop. Paintnet supports a lot of the "pro" features find in paid programs like layers, sharpening, blurring, decolorizing, gradient, 3D rotate/zoom, as well as all the basic ones like brightness, hue, saturation adjustments.
Its got a very nice UI and very intuitive, in order to handle multiple images easily, Paint.NET uses a tabbed document interface.
The only quirk for me is the text module, which doesn't save history of each individual text module, so if you want to change the text later you are screwed. It also doesn't have say a mash tool like the corel image editor does and of course lack some of the more advanced image enlargement/reducer filters.
If you have some comments or programs you think are worthwhile, please post them in the comments.
I also want constructive posts and will be banning every post that looks to just bash on my choices, again if you think you know a better program write it down and say why its better.
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Why didn't you review any of the Adobe products?
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Guessing it's because they cost money.
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I like LightRoom a lot actually. It's has convenient features like bulk editing and it allows you to view your photos in raw format.
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Netherlands1115 Posts
well i loved pain.net to begin with. Now i'm using photoshop now and then, never looked back
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i honestly wonder why anybody wouldn't use photoshop o.o
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On April 04 2011 04:36 ProjectVirtue wrote:
i honestly wonder why anybody wouldn't use photoshop o.o
It costs a billion dollars... Unless you're willing to pirate it <__<
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On April 04 2011 04:53 buhhy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 04:36 ProjectVirtue wrote:
i honestly wonder why anybody wouldn't use photoshop o.o It costs a billion dollars... Unless you're willing to pirate it <__<
FYI, I attended an adobe seminar last time and met with one of the adobe representative and he told me that Adobe wants students to actually steal their products.
Why? Think about it. What are the 3 most widely used software out there by designers? Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. By allowing us (students) to steal their stuffs, we're making them industry standard, and it's working. And that's pretty much why it's so easy to crack Adobe's softwares. Of course, they won't allow companies to do so.
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On April 04 2011 05:02 apm66 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 04:53 buhhy wrote:On April 04 2011 04:36 ProjectVirtue wrote:
i honestly wonder why anybody wouldn't use photoshop o.o It costs a billion dollars... Unless you're willing to pirate it <__< FYI, I attended an adobe seminar last time and met with one of the adobe representative and he told me that Adobe wants students to actually steal their products.
Why? Think about it. What are the 3 most widely used software out there by designers? Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. By allowing us (students) to steal their stuffs, we're making them industry standard, and it's working. And that's pretty much why it's so easy to crack Adobe's softwares. Of course, they won't allow companies to do so.
Ahh, that's actually an interesting perspective. I won't feel so ashamed then :D
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On April 04 2011 05:10 buhhy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 05:02 apm66 wrote:On April 04 2011 04:53 buhhy wrote:On April 04 2011 04:36 ProjectVirtue wrote:
i honestly wonder why anybody wouldn't use photoshop o.o It costs a billion dollars... Unless you're willing to pirate it <__< FYI, I attended an adobe seminar last time and met with one of the adobe representative and he told me that Adobe wants students to actually steal their products.
Why? Think about it. What are the 3 most widely used software out there by designers? Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. By allowing us (students) to steal their stuffs, we're making them industry standard, and it's working. And that's pretty much why it's so easy to crack Adobe's softwares. Of course, they won't allow companies to do so. Ahh, that's actually an interesting perspective. I won't feel so ashamed then :D
Sweet, I'm not actually going to hell!
I mean, the cost of Adobe suites is seriously beyond any student's budget, so it kind of makes sense.
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Ah yes, Irfanview is really nice. I like it as well. Photoshop can be a bit overwhelming when you don't have any prior knowledge and just want to have an easy image manipulation program.
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EPT
