Wish You Had Photoshop, But Don't Have The Cash?

If you are anything like me, you have spent at least some period of time drooling over the website showing the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 version. It's alright, you can admit it...it's a beautiful piece of software. There is still one small problem though, the price! Oh my, it is not cheap, is it??

So what are you supposed to do if you enjoy graphic design but don't have the cash to cough up for Photoshop? The next option is to look towards a wonderful thing called freeware. And it just so happens that there is a great piece of freeware out there for graphic design. It is called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and can be downloaded for free on their website.

It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

I'd encourage you to go check it out and come back and leave a comment letting everyone know what you think about it, good or bad.

Luke

Tired of Microsoft Clip Art?

It's okay, just admit it, the cartoon clip art that comes complimentary with PowerPoint isn't quite doing the trick for your presentations at church, but you keep using them because you know you don't have hundreds of dollars to be spending on print-quality stock photos. The good news is that there is another option! And that other option is called iStockPhoto [istockphoto.com]. It's not quite free like the clip art, but almost free. And the really good news, it's the type of quality that you won't be ashamed to show at your church! You can use these images and be proud that you have used your resources to present God's Word in a quality way!

Is it really that useful though? That is a good question so let's look at an example of a time that you could use an image from iStockPhoto. For example, let's say you have a powerpoint presentation that you are putting together to let your audience know about a couple of upcoming events, one of which is a work day to go rake leaves for senior citizens around the community. You put together the text and decide that you want a photo on the slide as well. Now you have 2 main options, pick a clip art image from your computer, or go to iStockPhoto.com and buy a high quality image for just over a dollar. Look below at the two images I came up with and see which one you would rather show to your audience, the one on the left that I found through my clipart, or the one on the right from iStockPhoto.

iStockPhoto has hundreds of thousands of photos, vector illustrations, flash files & videos for low prices [starting at around $1 per image!]. And the best part about it is once you have purchased it you can keep using it over and over again and not have to pay any royalty fees! If you find an image on iStockPhoto that you like and want to purchase, my recommendation would be to buy a XSmall or Small if you are using it as a piece of a screen, but if you are wanting to fill the whole screen I would purchase at least a Medium size image. That's all for now, have fun searching photos!

Luke