People of photo editing and digital art: i need your help!

[xxAngelOnFirexx]

I just got like this new awesome camera as a very early birthday present for my sweet sixteenth (my current sux because my other good one broke and my grandfather, who even though has a good camera himself, bought me and my sis lower versions instead of upgrade so i wanted a decent one this time).then i was going to get this digital editing program but then i noticed it didn't have drawing. what the best program for digitaly editing and digital art without a cost over $500? i need a cheap one but i'l will to pitch in if mom/dad bails on because of the price. i'm an artist and photographer and i've been waiting years to find one. i'm thinking photoshop but that was too expensive last time. i have a Windows running labtop. i'd REALLY apprecaite and feedback. or maybe two separate cheap programs for digi art and photoediting. and cheap in a good deal way not a poor quality way. i want to catch up with everyone else whose had stuff forever. and we don't have much money either. so thanks:)

[Miaplacidus]

Try Gimp for photo editing... it's free, www.gimp.org. And it isn't that bad, I use that for Full Spectrum.

You could consider solutions by Corel as well, www.corel.com, so far I've had good experiences with those and they have trial versions available for download. Corel's solution for digital art is Corel Painter (at version X at the moment), and for photo editing, PhotoPaint and Paint Shop Pro.

[sdc91]

If you know someone at university, ask them to purchase it for you at the campus bookstore. I had a friend at UT who was able to get Photoshop for my brother for $60.

[Sexiican01]

I have Photoshop CS3 Extended
and that's how I edit everything of mine

[beckyg]

I want to remind everyone that it is against the EC Code of Conduct to encourage members to use pirated software. If you do, your post will be deleted. Thanks for adhering to this rule!

#20 - Do not share, ask to share, or link to Bit Torrent files or other downloadable pirated videos, music, or software etc. It is not OK under any circumstance to share materials from any membership site that normally requires a fee to access the material. This is expressly prohibited. This includes links to rapidshare and similar services that exist to infringe on copyrights.

[Level N Human]

Then.. Gimp is still freeware though. ^^ Google that stuffs.

[Paul_UK]

For photo editing I can recommend PhotoShop Elements. It is commercial software but is a lot cheaper than the full PhotoShop. I use it at work for photo editing for the websites and it's excellent.

A freebie (for Windows) to look it is IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/). It is not a full-blown photo editor but it has many of the basic tools for things like resizing, cropping, adjusting sharpness, colour and contrast adjustment, red-eye reduction etc.

Another one is Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net/) which is quite highly regarded but I've never used so can't comment on its features. From a quick look at the website it seems to be fairly powerful. It's free though, so worth a look.

[Urman]

For photo editing I can recommend PhotoShop Elements. It is commercial software but is a lot cheaper than the full PhotoShop. I use it at work for photo editing for the websites and it's excellent.

A freebie (for Windows) to look it is IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/). It is not a full-blown photo editor but it has many of the basic tools for things like resizing, cropping, adjusting sharpness, colour and contrast adjustment, red-eye reduction etc.

Another one is Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net/) which is quite highly regarded but I've never used so can't comment on its features. From a quick look at the website it seems to be fairly powerful. It's free though, so worth a look.

I like IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) very good program

[Paul_UK]

Another option is to look on eBay for older versions of commercial software. I still use Corel PhotoPaint 7 (part of the CorelDraw 7 suite which dates from 1998) for some photo retouching work. You could probably get a copy very cheaply now, and it works fine on Windows XP and Vista.