Graphics Programs

“I'm trying to use Paint Shop Pro 8 to make graphics for my new website (so everyone on TT can look and go ooh ahh), but I've never done any kind of graphics work and this program is a big pain in the ass, not intuitive at all, although that's probably b/c I have no experience in this realm. Just ranting I guess, but I'm frustrated, I have no idea what the difference is b/t a raster layer and a vector layer, and many other such notions.”

“Generally if you want to effectively use a graphics program you're going to need a book on that program. I use Photoshop and I'm not that good at it, but I can usually do what I want to do. However, I have some artist friends that are pros at it and they use the program in a completely different way than I do. For example I use menus and the mouse a lot. They use the keyboard and keyboard shortcuts more. Their pictures can have 1,000's of layers...mine has at most about 10. So basically what I'm saying is you'll just have to play with it and learn to do what you want to do or buy a book and save yourself some pain. Half.com sells manuals pretty cheap.”

“I was thinking of going ahead and getting a book, I'll check out their website.”

“A book will definately help and save you a ton of time. You'll be thankful you got it. And I am speaking from experience. Playing around and testing out each feature takes longer than looking up what you want to do in an index.

Eventually I'd like to take a class on Photoshop, learn some advanced features.”

“Check with BigPoppa. Several others chime in I am sure.”

“I've been using Photoshop on my site now for about a year. I'm no graphic artist, but I like to tinker. I bought one of the "Tips and Tricks" books and it helped me do some neat things. I aslo have a friend who is a graphic artist and knows Photoshop forwards and backwards, so he has been very helpful.

I would also suggest getting a book on it. I'm trying to teach myself GoLive after using FP2000 for years. I'm going to pick up a help-book this weekend.

DubThere is a very helpful website (forum) for Photoshop users. Check it out at Photoshop Techniques Forum.”

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Ooops.”

“Thanks for the suggestion Hikin Mike. I'll have to check that out. As for GoLive, it's a terrible editor. If you write any custom code like java or PHP it does not provide any support or syntax highlighting. Plus I found that it could make simple things like editing an HTML table hard. I was required to use GoLive at my old job and hated it. I'd use Dreamweaver instead if you want to get away from FP.”

“Thanks Dub, I may go that route as I have a copy of Dreamweaver also and know someone who knows about it. I don't write custom stuff, but I do modify things I've found.

I've found out that I can't edit my style sheets using FP2000 that I once created using FP2000. I'm thinking it is becoming less compatable with newer Windows operating systems.”

“Ya gotta play with it. Bet it came (if bought) with a COUPLE books. Think it might be a good idea to read em?”

“Dreamweaver is nice but always drops in those damn sloppy DIV tags if you make the mistake of using the design view. I preferred it when it was Homesite. Sometimes notepad is the only way to go though.

Like the others have said, you need to get a book and read it. Classes on editing programs usually just walk you through the book you just bought plus adding a few hundred bucks for the priveledge of having someone nanny you too.”

“shoot me a question about graphics and I will be glad to help. Clajus1@aol.com
A simple understanding about Rastor and Vector is this. Vector has the ablilty of enlarging and reducing without reducing resolution (dpi) Rastor has a set resolution, if you increase the size, you lose resolution and decrease size you can gain resolution.

For web work, it is not a real issue because you need the lowest resolution needed, which is 72 dpi. Photographes and general clip art, jpgs,tiffs are rastor. Illustrator, Pagemaker, Quarke are programs that deal with Vector files.

Did that make sense or did I make it too complicated? If something tells you that it needs to rastorize before proceeding, say yes. The majority of the time, it is not going to hurt anything.”

“Thanks for that explanation Bigpoppa, I'll be sure to email you if I have any other specific questions. I ordered a book today thru amazon, so hopefully that will help.”