Photoshop

[sherry_hendrix68]

Hoping someone can give me some insight here... Honestly, I just can't afford Photoshop CS3 or 4 with a $600 pricetag. I have found "Elements" for around $100 but not sure if this is going to do what I want or if this is just an upgrade if you already have Photoshop. I am very new to digiscrapping and so far the only thing that I have really found that I want to use it for is coloring word art. I am sure there is so much more to it but since I am a newbie.. haven't really gotten that far.
thanks,
Sherry

[crops2dawn]

I have Elements 6 and its NOT an upgrade to CS3 or 4... I havent a clue what in those, cause like you, I can NO WAY afford it! But I gotta tell ya... I LOVE PSE6...and personally I recommend it to anyone! There are sooo many tuts on there, just google it and you can read all about it for the rest of your life....LOL and tons of free stuff to add to it....

Which Elements have you found...cause you can get it cheaper!!!

[sherry_hendrix68]

thanks for the info... I'll go check it out... I think elements 7 is the one that I found, I was just worried about spending the money and then finding out it was just an upgrade and wouldn't work.

[MaggieMae]

You might want to check out Estee's Barn which uses Real Draw Pro and is very affordable with the program and the tutorials included! You can make frames, change colors, do fancy wordart, etc. It's a wonderful choice! It's a site that Granny (Esther Barry) has and it works beautifully with Scrapbook Max! I have Elements - but use Real Draw a lot more!

[sherry_hendrix68]

Thanks, she has a link for a trial version... gonna try that. It doesn't really go into photo editing like elements but hopefully it'll do that too... thanks again for the info

[angelwithin]

photo elements 6 is a great little program....you can do a lot of things with it

but if you want a cheaper program with more versatility you may want to check out the older versions of paint shop pro.....i use version 9 and it is fabulous....i've had it over 6 years and still finding new things it can do! you can now pick this program up for around £20 ($40) on ebay just search paintshop pro 9....i can send you links to tutorials for psp9

there is also real draw ....if you join grannys site she also has a ton of tutorials for it

or a free program that many of the girls use is Gimp...although i hear it can be hard to learn.

good luck which ever you choose xx

[sacannon]

I have both PSE6 and Real Draw and love them both. Many people have two or more programs because one program will not do everything you want. I would start with one and later on you could get another.

[Granny]

Hi Sherry, welcome to the forum. I have all the above mentioned programs, well, except CS3, and I love them all. Elements is a great program, but I use RealDraw the most because it's so easy to use. Although it's not a true image editor, it does a great deal of editing. If your main purpose is to create embellishments, then it's a great program. Specially version 5. And the developer is upgrading it right now. Many wonderful new options.

Because RealDraw uses layers in the background, you don't have to take so many steps to create something. In fact, most of the time, I can create something in RealDraw in 1/3 the time and effort that it would take to create it in other programs. But like Sac mentioned, if you are serious about creating and would like to become a designer eventually, you will want to have more than one program, because none of them do it all.

My recommendations... Either PSElements 7, which comes with a great tutorial CD from Scrapping Premier; PSP, which has 1000s of tutorials on the net; or a membership to my site with RealDrawPro5.

Now that we got you totally confused!

[CrystalInMinn]

I tried the free trials of Paint shop pro and CS3 before I bought them. I picked them up for PSP x2- $40 and CS3 extended- $160 US Dollar on sale in the like new and used category at amazon. Thet shipped it right away and I am very pleased with both. I like the different things that they each can do too.

I want to get Real draw too because I am learning to design and the vector graphics are beyond me

I am getting myself a wacom bamboo fun drawing tablet for christmas and it comes with a free copy of elements 6.

And of course I started with scrapbookmax and a free copy of Gimp. So I use all of them.

I like to do my LO If I am in a hurry still with Scrapbookmax cause I love the immediate result. I can do a LO in about 20 min in Scrapbookmax.

I am doing some of my LO's in Paintshop pro and taking about 3 hours. The CS3 I just use for designing as I don't have enough memory and my computer just can't handle it yet.

I had to purchase some tutorials when I had the trials to figure out paintshop pro and CS3 and they were well worth it! of course the CD copies that I purchased came with tuts.

[Granny]

The new version of RealDraw is out, and after hounding the developer for years, he finally promised me to add the ability to use Photoshop compatible filters to RD. I'm hoping it will be out very soon. That, and some other goodies he is working on will make RD the most affordable, easiest to use program out there. And once the outside filters are added, I can adjust all the tutorials for PS, PSE, and PSP to RealDraw.

I recommend downloading the trial version and looking at the samples included in the program.

The sky is the limit!

[RachellIowa]

I use corel paintshop photo prox2 but have older versions also that I still use and soon want to join grannys group with the real draw program but for now I love psp x2 .

[MommaBird]

All of these are great programs. One will have something the others don't and vice versa. Paint Shop Pro has been fundamentally the same since version 8 (the last version released by Jasc before being acquired by Corel.) Corel also acquired all the Ulead products which were strong products, as well as Painter which was originally Metacreations. PSP, as it is called, will do about anything you need. If you can find Photoshop 7 still out there, that was the last version before they started the C1, C2, etc. That was and is a very strong version of Photoshop. I also have GIMP and it is a powerful, free program, but you might want to invest in a book since it is not as intuitive as the others.

And what can we say about RealDraw? Mediachance, the maker of RealDraw is fantastic and handles vector and bitmaps. And you have the other benefit of joining Granny's site for practically the price of the software and getting the benefit of her tutorials and freebies!!! Really can't be beat, especially with the new version just being released. Her site is www.esteesbarn.com

Good luck with whatever you choose!

[MommaBird]

I forgot to add, the same company that makes RealDraw also makes PhotoBrush which is a powerful program more into photo editing. They have a 30-day download of this as well. This is a fully functional copy, no watermarks and such.

[Granny]

Mommabird, thank you for the plug...

Here is an upgrade on PhotoSeam. Oscar has just released Pattern Studio 5. It is not simply an upgrade to PhotoSeam, it's an incredible texture editor. The program looks just like RD, but it creates seamless textures from bitmaps (photos) or vectors (scratch). It is totally incredible. And if you have RD5.2, you can get Pattern Studio for only $25. After the introuductory period, the price will be $68.

If you're serious about being a designer or want to make your own papers, textures, backgrounds, etc, I highly recommend this.

Here is a link to the product page and trial version. Be sure to watch the videos to see how powerful this program is.

http://www.mediachance.com/patternstudio/index.html