Which software would you use?

[Deja Q]

You need a software package that will take scanned or other images and resize them. Maybe add in some text. Images will be used for web. There is no need to edit images or do any post-production work.

What would you use?

I'm thinking Photoshop Elements would work swell for the people who told me about their situation after I saw the invoice. It works, is a solid product, and costs a reasonable sum of money.

Some people I know, who think they're real hot shots (and are anything but), tell everybody to buy Fireworks because it's their "standard". (on edit: Sadly, they had purchased and opened Fireworks before I saw their invoice. They weren't happy with the price before, but they're certainly upset now... of course, my credibility had gone up in the process, which is good... O8) )

I'll tell you who the people are later...

[brokensymmetry]

1. Or maybe Paintshop Pro.

Shareware...

[Catch22Dem]

8. I 2nd that

I've been using PSP for years.

[nini]

20. agree... a great product

I bought the whole thing after liking it so much.

Full blown is a good buy too.

[Enraged_Ape]

21. 95% of the functionality of Photoshop at 10% of the price

Can't beat that. And it loads and runs ten times faster than Photoshop.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro 6.0 for years, and I still love it.

[lcordero]

2. I would try gimp for windows before I would buy anything

[Wickerman]

3. Jasc

Image Pro or something like that. I'd prefer Elements. My govt employer wouldn't spring for an Adobe product so I wound up with the Jasc product. To my surprise I like it. Pretty easy to use, reduces images well once you find your settings.

[DS1]

4. What kind of text work?

MSPaint could do all of the above, but who wants to use that? I'm asking because I can't answer the question until I know how 'pretty' or 'refined' the text needs to look.

[Deja Q]

6. MS Paint is rubbish; they need SOME control and features...

and jpg file save preview...

[DS1]

9. I know it's rubbish

I guess for me it depends on how important the appearance of the text is, but for a dollars only vote, Jasc.

[cprise]

5. Pop this disk in, it's free--

http://www.knoppix.net/

Just download it, burn a CD, then reboot the system from the CD. It will boot up Linux and detect your scanner automatically... no fuss whatsoever. It has a nice scanner utility that I use regularly, as well as a powerful image editing tool called the Gimp.

This will NOT install anything on your hard drive. But you can save the images that you scan there.

[Deja Q]

7. Who voted for Fireworks?!!

:silly:

[TrogL]

10. Lview pro

it's free

[OneBlueSky]

17. I agree . . . great program . . . n/t

.

[ConcernedCanuk]

18. " "Lview pro" - it's free " ??? - where ?

.
.
I went to their site >> http://www.lview.com/Download.htm

this is what I see

Option 1:
Order the boxed Full Version of LView Pro, complete with User's Manual and our satisfaction guarantee


Option 2:
Download the 21-day Limited LView Pro Evaluation Version, with on-line help support only (Windows help file)


Option 3:
Avoid download errors by ordering the $4.99 evaluation CD ROM complete with printer friendly user-manual.
Order the demo CD, and apply the price of the demo CD towards a future purchase of the full version

Is it available elsewhere ?

Thanx

[OneBlueSky]

22. well, I downloaded the trial version . . .

and have been using it for several years now . . . maybe their security has improved since then, but I'm still using it for free . . .

[Pobeka]

11. Habla Linux? - Gimp is considered nearly as good as photoshop, for free.

[parasim]

12. I voted PhotoShop

But that's natch since I've been using it since version 1 and pretty much spend 75% of my working life and a quarter of my recreation time in the program and would not want to use anything else serious photo manipulation.

I have used Fireworks but that was when it first came out and was the only one that did image slicing for art for websites... but now since PS has that function built in (well, with it's pseudo-add-on, Image Ready).

For the needs you stated, and you're on an Intel-compatible machine, PS Elements is perfectly fine, and the other programs mentioned by others here, Paintshop Pro and Gimp also work good as well for that kind of stuff.

Of course, If you're on a Mac with Jaguar or Panther, Apple's own freebie, iPhoto works wonders. It what I use for fast manipulation of family snapshots and the like.

[pocoloco]

13. If you really want to try out something really neat and the price is

right. Originally for Linux and Unix (whatever that is) but now there is a Windows version.

What is the GIMP
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. This site contains information about downloading, installing, using, and enhancing the GIMP. This site also serves as a distribution point for the latest releases, patches, plugins, and scripts. We also try to provide as much information about the GIMP community and related projects as possible.

http://gimp.org/

[pocoloco]

14. Does animation also!

[ConcernedCanuk]

15. I lied, I voted PhotoShop 7.0 - but I use PS5.5 and ImageForge

.
.
Take a peeek at the specs

. . . . . . . . . . . .




ImageForge Standard 3.41
Freeware art studio for creating or editing images, simple .avi animations, photos, picture albums and screensavers.
FEATURES: Clipart brushes; Soft brushes; Scatter and Spatter; Special Effect Filters;
TWAIN scanner & device support; Color-replacement; Gradients and Patterns; Crop, Enlarge, Resize, Resample, Skew, Rotate by Degree;
AVI and BMP filmstrip animations; Tools to produce slide shows; much more.


File name: ImageForge Standard 3.41
Product homepage: Product homepage
Order page: Order information
Language: Unknown
Platform: Windows 2000-95-98-ME-NT-XP
Release Date: 12/2/2003
File type: Freeware
Size: 4785 KBytes
Price/fee (US$): 0.00$
Number of downloads: 266

I am presently using a previous version (3.31) and quite happy with it. i use it to convert files that for some reason my PhotoShop 5.5 doesn't recognize. My Photoshop won't open damages graphics, but ImageForge will, and then I can open and "play" with them in PhotoShop.

It' Free, and it's small - Try it- I think you'll like it !

(Oh, I'm downloading the 3.41 version as I post !)

[Eroshan]

16. I've used elements and ULead

Ulead wins hands down. If you ever feel the need to do anyhting in graphics Ulead will do it for you. Animation, advances 3d graphics, photomanipulation its all in the box. Great program.

[nini]

19. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro

about 50-70 bucks.. Does what I need it to.

[earthman dave]

23. I agree with the other posters who recommend the gimp

[Ratty]

24. Oh man. NO PHOTOSHOP!

It's way way way way overpowered for what you want to do. I have photoshop here at work and I futz with images all the time, but I NEVER use it. It's just too complicated, takes too long to start up, hogs memory and resources. It's horrible.

Like most recommendations here I use Paint Shop Pro and I love it. It does everything I ever need to do with images and everything's simple and intuitive. Pretty darn cheap besides.

Photoshop has some amazing plugins, so if that's what you need (and can afford some of the commercial ones), then you need Photoshop. You can also script Photoshop to do a lot of sophisticated batch stuff to hundreds or thousands of images at a time. But scripting Photoshop is NOT easy. Personally I use Thumbs Plus to do most of my batch processing as it's really easy and for some things actually does a better job than Photoshop. Any batch processing I can't do in Thumbs Plus I do with perl and ImageMagick.

You really, really don't need Photoshop.