Application Recommendation Wanted


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DanielBrenton

DanielBrenton

Technology Novice
To All --

Brand new to these forums, though I'm a Paracast fan also. Had a question.

Let me set this up a little.

Mac has kissed Classic goodbye (thank you Mr. Jobs) and now this creature of habit (me) has to look around for some new software, and it's only appropriate I drag my virtual butt into the 21st Century.

Every so often I need to make use of a graphics program to build basic images, and then I'll use Photoshop to enhance what I'm working on and crunch it for web use.

(Okay, now you're going to laugh.)

Remember Superpaint? I actually got it to run on my OS 10.3 Classic mode, though it has a few hiccups here and there. What I liked about it is that it was so intuitive and user-friendly (Gene -- I used it for the lettering gradients for the animated graphic you put up for me on The Paracast side, and for a lot of the graphics on the Luna 15 website).

I am not a professional artist by any means, but I would like suggestions as to some kind of well-rounded graphics program that can give me good results without making me crazy while trying to learn it.

Suggestions?
 
Gene Steinberg said:
I'll ask around, but have you considered Illustrator?
Click to expand...

Gene --

That would be the obvious one, wouldn't it?

I hadn't just jumped into that because I used to work near a graphics department for a fairly large company, and they seemed to be moving away from Illustrator. Of course, this was a Windows-oriented company, and I didn't follow what they were doing very closely or the reasons behind it.

Thanks, I'll see what I can pick up about it. I haven't seen a Mac version of Illustrator for many years.
 
DanielBrenton said:
Gene Steinberg said:
I'll ask around, but have you considered Illustrator?
Click to expand...

Gene --

That would be the obvious one, wouldn't it?

I hadn't just jumped into that because I used to work near a graphics department for a fairly large company, and they seemed to be moving away from Illustrator. Of course, this was a Windows-oriented company, and I didn't follow what they were doing very closely or the reasons behind it.

Thanks, I'll see what I can pick up about it. I haven't seen a Mac version of Illustrator for many years.
Click to expand...

It's still an industry-standard.

Of course, David Biedny knows about all the stuff that doesn't get millions of dollars of publicity.
 
Moving away from illustrator? OUCH!

Corel? Freehand? Mario Paint?

I don't think I could ever use anything but Illustrator for vector art. I had to use Corel once....and I'm still recovering.
Get your hands on Illustrator. It's been industry standard since....since....when did dinosaurs die out? You're better off learning it in the long run. Go on...you know you want to.
 
By no means am I a graphic artist but I've dabbled in a few programs and can only recommend them as try before you buy. :D I've gotten lucky and picked up a few too many myself using MacZot, MacUpdate Promo and the MacHeist sites. It's a big savings of typically 40-60% on the daily stuff but around 80%+ on the bundles.
Maybe Gene can look into getting a link from here to those guys if they'll hook him up with a referral fee. ;)
Anyway, here's my list that by no means will replace PhotoShop but have you looked into PS Elements? I understand it's affordable and very powerful as David Biedny has mentioned many times. I've added an * to those I own and use somewhat regularly so I suppose the 1st 7 of my list below I would recommend that you give them a serious look.
A simple google search should get you there:
Live Quartz*
Vector Designer*
Pixelmator*
Image Tricks, Image Tricks Pro*
EazyDraw*
Art Text 2.0*
ArtRage 2.5*
Drawit!*
Acorn*
Google Sketchup*
ImageWell*
Skitch
Inkscape
Paintbrush 2.0
Pixen
Vanilla 3.0
The only downside is the stability of some, lack of continued support or updates and with their limitations you might come out better buying Elements, unless a few cheap or shareware apps above can do the same or more for less. :D
 
Gene Steinberg said:
I suppose David Biedny needs to look this over and make some comments? :)
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, he's the expert for sure! :D As far as the best bang for the buck the donation-ware app Live Quartz seems to be the best as long as you're not doing large images over 640X480 as I recall. The developer is aware of that limitation and has promised to address this in the next release. However, for quick and non-high rez web based stuff it should be capable of some of the work he's looking to produce. Live Quartz has many tutorials and samples which I found very helpful when you don't know Jack or David when they start talking blurs and filters etc. ;)
As of 4.29.2K9 the developer is quoted to be making a version update announcement very soon.
 
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