What program should I use?

[Texas_Tickle]

I have not one ounce of artistic ability (unless you count stick-figures as 'art') and I would really love to find a newbie-friendly program where I can create or render images.

My best friend has Poser 7, but when I read the manual, I may as well be reading Greek.

Does anybody know of a good program that I may find useful?

 

[Sablesword]

It depends on what kind of art you want to create, and on how your mind works.

If you have your heart set on 3-D style renderings, you'll have to use Poser or a poser-like program and deal with the instructions in "Greek."

Photoshop is very popular. You will need a drawing tablet if you go that way, but the basic Wacom tablets come with Photoshop Express - a "lite" version of Photoshop. There are also various other "paint" programs more or less like Photoshop, ranging from free to cheap to not-cheap.

Photoshop is also used a lot by people who draw on paper, the old-fashioned way, then scan in their drawings and use a program to touch-up and color the result.

I use CorelDraw, because it matches the way my mind works. It's a vector-based program - it works by letting you create lines and shapes that you then can then modify in various ways. (As opposed to paint type programs that put smears of pixels on a virtual canvas.) I work by creating very rough shapes and lines ("block figures" - like stick figures, only... blockier) Then I smooth and bend the lines, and cut & weld the shapes, and adjust the colors, and add smaller shapes and lines for the highlights, shadows, and details.

Some people use both types of programs - vector type programs for some parts of their drawings, and paint type programs for other parts.

Abobe (makers of Photoshop) and Corel both offer free trial downloads of their programs. There are also various freeware alternatives: E.g. GIMP as a freeware paint program, or Inkscape as a freeware vector program.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm is a good source for free programs in general.

 

[scavenger]

If you want to try your hand at some 3D art, Why not try out DAZ Studio ? It's as least as powerful as Poser (and fully compatible with Poser content) and the core software is free for download at the DAZ website, also it comes with a free base female model (Victoria 3), a fairy outfit, and a fairy forest scene. If you sign up for their newsletter (also free) you'll receive notifications of new expansion packages as well as free ones. DAZ has also a manual with a step-by-step tutorial on setting up your first scene.

I myself don't really use 3D stuff, but I experimented with DAZ and it seemed like a great program for those interested in 3D art.

 

[Lauren Tyler]

DAZ is hard to work with for some reason. I can't get the figures to move around for some reason. Maybe it's just me though?

At any rate, I generally color in my lineart using colored pencils, but I've considered moving to a computer program. I've got The GIMP, which is pretty much a freeware GNU clone of PhotoShop/PaintShop, but I've considered something else. How much is CorelDraw?

 

[EcEu]

corel draw is psychotic how good it's designed. It's definitely a program for us people who have really jittery hands. From what i remember about the first time i used the program, it's vector based so whatever you draw can be sized up and down without any loss of information, plus it gets even better if you have a drawing tablet. I got my first one for 50$ at thinkgeek.

I've tried poser 7 before on a friend's computer, i figured it out just by playing around with it, same with flash, painter, photoshop, and illustrator come to think of it. I find it's really helpful to find tutorials made by other regular users.

 

[scavenger]

For vector based stuff you could also use Inkscape, which looks really professional, but is actually open-source (= free) software. Though I use vectors from time to time in Photoshop, I myself have little experience with pure vector-software. I worked a bit with Illustrator at school, and I remembered trying out CorelDraw (we got a copy that came free with our Win95 computer) but that's about it.

DAZ studio is a little less user-friendly than Poser (especially for a new user), but as far as I can tell, the results are as good as it's counterpart, and it's render engine is pretty powerful as well, from what I can tell...