PROGRAMS FOR DRAWING / IMAGE EDITING


Graphic/Drawing programs

There are several nice image editing programs for digital drawing. Some are freeware,
some are cheap, and some professional programs are very expensive.

Here are some examples / suggestions for such programs:

  • Adobe Photoshop (professional program, very expensive) [info]  [get]

  • Paint Tool SAI (30 days trial, full version price ~ $70) [info & get]

  • Open Canvas (free trial available, full version price ~ $60-70) [info]  [get]

  • Art Rage (nice price ~ $20-80) [info & get]

  • GIMP (freeware) [info]  [get]

I personally have always been working with Adobe Photoshop, as it is a very professional program with many options and abilities including an advanced layer system, processing effects or filters. I've been using it almost daily since 1999. Unfortunately it is also one of the most expensive programs available.

Programs like Paint Tool SAI or Open Canvas are definitely nice and cheaper alternatives though. Especially SAI is very nice for inking, while Art Rage offers a lot of possibilities for imitating traditional media (like oil, pastel, etc.) in an authentic way, and Open Canvas for example is well known for its unique blending style (working perfectly together with a graphic tablet). I can't say which one I would recommend, because I haven't been working with them long enough, and it's always a personal choice which works best for you.



Vector programs

The program I am using for vector graphics is Adobe Illustrator. It's not an image editing program intented for regular images, but in first line for vector illustrations and designs (often used for logos). Like Photoshop, it is pretty expensive.

Here are two pictures to show you the difference between a pixel graphic (left) and a vector based graphic (right). If you enlarge a pixel based graphic (e.g. a photo), the quality will become worse and get "blurry" (as the pixels have to be "stretched").
A vector file is - as the name says - based on vectors, which means you can scale it to whatever size without loosing quality (cause the graphic will always be to scale).

Vector file formats are for example eps, svg or ai (Illustrator file),
pixel files would be jpg, gif, png, tiff, etc.





Animation programs

For creating animated gifs I use either Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe ImageReady or the newer versions of Adobe Photoshop, which now includes the animation options from ImageReady. These programs aren't cheap, but there are also freeware tools available for creating animations.

Another vector based animation program is Macromedia Flash which offers a lot of possibilities, from simple animations through animated websites to extremely complex movies or games. Creating such complex works requires additional skills in using action scripts, though.