PSP or What?

freedom7 · Oct 14, 2014

Hi everyone,

My wife is the author (working on 2nd book) and she asked if I would be interested in designing the cover for the book she is working on. She is on the last chapter so I need to get going. I wanted to use Photoshop because it merges images so well, but along with best performance comes high price. I am on a tight budget so I thought I would go with program that was suggested (Gimp) because it comes as a free alternative. I checked out a couple tutorials of Gimp and it does seem to come a little short when it comes to merging images. I have worked with Photoshop in the past, but I gave it up when I put my Win XP PC to sleep about 5 years ago. Would appreciate if anyone could possibly suggest maybe a little less expensive version of Photoshop or something close with Imaging. I am now using Win 8.1 if that will have any impact on what I can use. Thank you for your help.

alleycat · Oct 14, 2014

GIMP is quite good with merging images. What did you want to do? Or what do you think you'd have trouble doing?

GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop but it's an acceptable alternate.

Craig McNeil · Oct 15, 2014

I agree that GIMP is a very acceptable alternative to Photoshop but it has a bit of a learning curve to it. I would persevere with it as to my knowledge it's the only alternative to Photoshop in terms of power.

Brightdreamer · Oct 15, 2014

I use Paint Shop Pro XI (I think - its not the new one, but a couple or three versions back, and I'm on my Nook now so I can't see the icon), and have yet to find anything Photoshop could do that it couldn't. The newer versions, I couldn't speak for, though... (EDIT - It's PSP X3 - that's about when I stopped upgrading, because I didn't like where Corel was taking it. Still does the job, though.)

My sister has good luck with PhotoPlus by Serif, so you might look into that.

I keep thinking I've seen a few non-GIMP free or cheap alternatives listed somewhere... will have to try to dig that up.

Reziac · Oct 15, 2014

Paint Shop Pro was just on special at NewEgg for under $30. It has very good filters and the learning curve isn't overly steep. It can be slow on an older machine (this is a problem with the filter handler).

My personal fave for image editing is Corel PhotoPaint, mainly for ease of use (also, its JPG compression offers better control and is less destructive to image quality than any of the others). I saw it somewhere recently for around $35. Also the top choice for older computers as even recent versions run well on old machines. It comes with a good tracing tool.

Photoshop is powerful but also such a pain to use that it's my last resort.

For the most part filters can be used by any of these. I usually dump all my filters into one directory and point all of them at it.

Alexys · Oct 15, 2014

Paint.NET used to be the next most popular free general raster graphics program, but it's Windows-only. MyPaint is interesting, but is intended primarily for tablet users drawing with a stylus. There are also a few free photo-retouch/darkroom-type programs, but I've enver used any of them and so can't speak to their quality.

Paint Shop Pro used to be head and shoulders ahead of both Photoshop and the GIMP in terms of ease-of-use (Photoshop's interface is just as bad as the GIMP's, just in a different way). Alternatively, if you really want Photoshop, you might want to see if you can subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud version for just one month--that's quite cheap and should give you enough time to do one cover. Of course, all the normal caveats about cloud services apply.

Matera the Mad · Oct 19, 2014

GIMP. GIMP! GIMP!!

$5016cc_mefracface2.jpg$

It's not the software that does the work, it's the hand and mind cotrolling it.

Reziac · Oct 19, 2014

Hmm. Appears GIMP causes mental illness.

EMaree · Oct 20, 2014

Photoshop CS2 has been released free (sort of, they shut the license servers down and it's a happy side effect).

Reziac · Oct 20, 2014

Ah, I'd forgotten about that. I have the boxed set (won it at a graphics conference) but when I finally got around to trying it, it would not install. Prolly cuz the activation servers were a gone thing.

Reziac · Oct 22, 2014

PSP Pro is on 24 hour promo again, for $24.99

http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/guerrilla/LP/14-OCT/index-exclu-cat_20.html

PSP or What?

freedom7

alleycat

Still around

Craig McNeil

Sitting in the shadows

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist

Reziac

Resident Alien

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Reziac

Resident Alien

EMaree

a demon for tea

Reziac

Resident Alien

Reziac

Resident Alien