Graphics Software

College Life
1

<p>Not too sure how many people will be able to answer this, but what is the best graphic software for a mac?</p>

2

<p>Adobe products (PhotoShop, Illustrator…) hands down. As far as the best value, free to a couple of dollars. I have pretty much the majority of all the Adobe products which I either got free from friends or for a few dollars from the Philippines. Long live pirated CDs. However, if you don’t have access to any of that, you could try downloading it from somewhere online. If not, buying the real thing could cost around $300 though some catalogs will give you a discount for buying a bundle.</p>

3

<p>well I removed the best value question since I figured that wouldn’t be the best way to go about it. I was planning on going with Adobe anyway but I was just curious to see what others thought.</p>

4

<p>What do you want to do with it? I use adobe products and they have something for everything… as far as layouts go, i perfer Quark to Illustrator, but that’s just me… but other than that, adobe’s are the best… Macromedia Studio MX is great too if you are into that kind of thing. I know at my school you can get educational discounts on all of these things, so you might want to look into something like that…</p>

5

<p>Here’s the breakdown</p>

<p>Adobe Photoshop - this is for touching things up, random messing with photos, etc.</p>

<p>Adobe Illustrator - You need to use this wen doing vector illustrations most of the time. Shapes, line art, etc are done in here. One common thing is to trace photos with illustrator to make something that looks cartoony. The HUGE advantage of illustrator over photoshop is that with it, you can make something small and size it up with no consequence, it’ll still look good!
<a href=“http://www.highway6.com/afrika/childsoldier2b.jpg[/url]”>http://www.highway6.com/afrika/childsoldier2b.jpg&lt;/a&gt; Thats a vector illustration I made.</p>

<p>Adobe InDesign - this is for making layouts and whatnot, you’d use this if you’re working on something with lots of different blocks of text (Maybe a magazine for instance.) Quark is good too, but I think InDesign is going to trump it.</p>

<p>If you like to draw, you can get a Wacom Tablet which will run you between 100 to 200 for a decent one, basically what you draw on the tablet occurs on the screen.</p>

6

<p>paint shop pro isnt too bad</p>

7

<p>Thanks everyone<br>
This software is intended for graphic design(that is my minor), website creation, and hopefully more professional work later on. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier, sorry. I’m pretty sure I’m going with adobe, like I mentioned before, I just wanted other insights. Adobe Illustrator looks awesome and Holden…wow, great illustration! I was also looking at getting the wacom tablet. My question about those are what difference can I expect from the 4x5 and the 6x8 other than the obvious size difference.</p>

8

<p>Quark and Illustator are used for two totally different purposes. Adobe’s equivalents to Quark are PageMaker and InDesign.</p>

<p>You are going to want Photoshop and ImageReady for web design, and Illustrator for vector graphics.</p>

<p>You might want to get the Creative Suite, which comes with Photoshop and ImageReady, Illustrator, and InDesign. GoLive and Acrobat can be added if you get the Premium Creative Suite rather than the standard.</p>

9

<p>"Quark is good too, but I think InDesign is going to trump it.'</p>

<p>If it hasn’t already done so.</p>

10

<p>btw once ur in college u get a big discount on all adobe software…</p>

11

<p>Yeah, if you have any further questions just ask. I’m pretty good at this design stuff, do a lot of work for money on the side of my school work. :slight_smile: Just won a medal for this: <a href=“http://www.highway6.com/afrika/childofwar.jpg[/url]”>http://www.highway6.com/afrika/childofwar.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

12

<p>Thing to understand about Adobe programs (assuming you’ve never used one before) before you run out and buy one. They are farily complicated and can take a long time to learn. Photoshop is a very powerful program, if you know how to use it, but it is also rather complex to learn how all the features work.</p>

13

<p>Don’t worry… I have used Adobe Photoshop CS in extensive use. Play with it at
8:30am twice a week during english class in the computer lab…haha</p>

<p>But anyway, I know quite a bit about using photoshop and I am working on learning to use the other programs as well. I just needed some insight on what’s <em>the best</em> and obviously… thats Adobe.</p>

14

<p>PSP {Paint Shop Pro} is pretty if decent you use a Windows PC.</p>

<p>MAC users need to use Photo Shop Elements,Photo Shop CS,Fireworks
or Corel products.</p>

15

<p>Pirate it…me and all the other graphic design students who recieved art scholarships did…Crime does pay!</p>