Abstract Design Studio - What Programs Do I Need? Tutorial

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What Programs Do I Need?
[ Plugins ] [ Web ] [ Hardware ]

An Editing Program

A lot of people ask themselves what they need when they're first starting out learning graphics. There are a lot of answers out there -- and some of them are very affordable. You may have heard names tossed out like CorelDraw, Corel PhotoPaint, Micrografx Picture Publisher, Ulead PhotoImpact, Metacreations Painter, and the one most often heard -- Adobe PhotoShop with its hefty $600+ price tag.

I don't use any of those. I do have PhotoShop 4, but I only use it once in a blue moon when a certain plugin (a third-party addon to graphics programs that extends its editing capabilities) won't work with anything else. What I *do* use, and what the tutorials here will be centered around, is Jasc's lovely Paint Shop Pro 5.01. Click on the link to download it, and you have 30 days to play with it free. After that it expires, and you can buy it for only $60USD at some places ($99 from website).

If you already have Paint Shop Pro (or PSP as we'll call it from now on), then great. Feel free to proceed!

Third Party Plugins

Plugins are great no matter what graphics program you have! There are a ton of them out there. I have a bunch, and I can tell you, they really enhance the graphics experience, and let you do a lot more than you could without them. Most of the best ones aren't free though, and some are downright expensive.

The big freebie plugins are the Filter Factory babies. There's literally hundreds of those, probably thousands! It takes hours and hours to pick through and find the ones you want. You can get a lot of them from PC Resources for PhotoShop's Plugins Galore page (don't be fooled, they work for PSP too). That page also talks more about plugins in-depth, and how to manage them. It really is a must-read for the beginner.

Using Graphics on the Web

That's what we're here for, right? We all want to stick these graphics on our webpages. Okay then, there's programs you should check into for doing this. A major must is some type of optimizing software. What's that, you say? Well you know how you go to a website and it takes forever to load the page? That might be because their graphics are too big in byte size. They need to shrink the size! So use an optimizer.

There's some freebies out there on the internet, but I usually haven't had good results with the web-based ones like Pegasus JPEG Wizard On-Line. I prefer to buy an optimizer program that handles different kinds of files, and lets me fiddle with the settings. I have Ulead Smartsaver, which comes with Ulead Webrazor Suite. Ulead puts out lots of awesome graphics utilities you could go look at too.

Another thing you might want to do is get into animating images. Luckily our baby PSP comes with an animating program (we do need an extra one to animate), and the manual is good at explaining how it works.

Hardware

Well, you need a computer (duh). Without it, you can't do anything. You need to make sure it at least fits the standards of the program you're using. Currently, what you need to run PSP5 is:

Required:

What's a pressure-sensitive tablet? A graphics table is something that lets you trace on it with a special pen, and it will communicate what you're tracing to the computer, as if you were drawing or painting on the screen. They come in different sizes, and some of the best ones are sold by Wacom. Unfortunately I don't have one yet, so I have to make do with my trackball... tablets make graphic creation seem more natural and they are a great benefit, but they are by no means necessary. Everything I've created on this website, everything I've ever created graphically, was done without a tablet.

There's a lot of other hardware out there that's useful for graphics creation, too. Scanners, digital cameras, videocams, you name it. Most beginners don't need these things yet, though, so don't worry. Just file the names away for use later on; you have enough to learn already!

Phew. Went through all that? Checked out all the programs and links? Then feel free to check out my other tutorials.

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