Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

Free Graphic Editors

Buying all the software needed to develop a website can be expensive, especially when you’re first learning and experimenting with a family or hobby site. Downloading a hacked version of Photoshop with a keygen is never a good idea and forking out a thousand dollars just isn’t an option for most people. What most don’t realize however is that there are many free graphic editors around with similar features to more professional programs like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Listed below are free image, graphic and photograph editors I’ve found to be of such a high quality it makes me wonder why they aren’t charging for them.

PhotoPlus 6 – beginner to advanced graphic artist
First choice has to be Serif PhotoPlus which can be downloaded from http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/inAction.asp
PhotoPlus 6 works and looks very similar to Paint Shop Pro and is great for the beginner to advanced artist. Tools include airbrush, clone, and smudge as well as erase tools with adjustable brush settings including size, shape, softness and fade. It also has GIF animation and image map capabilities.

Irfanview – beginner website designer
Irfanview is a very effective editor for webmasters that simply need to resize images or change the format. For example, from JPEG to GIF format.
One of the main advantages to Irfanview is its small download size. Only 1MB which can be downloaded from http://www.irfanview.com/
I recommend Irfanview for beginners who don’t need to do a lot of photo manipulation. It can also be used simply as a photo viewer with thumbnail capabilities.

PhotoFilter – beginner to intermediate user
PhotoFilter is great for the beginner to intermediate graphic designer who doesn’t have a need for layers. It offers a wide range of artistic filters such as watercolor or puzzle effects as well as rotation, shading or blending. PhotoFilter also allows you to scan images from your digital or video camera for editing. PhotoFilter 6 is a remarkably small file to download (1.5 MB) and is available from http://www.photofiltre.com/

GIMP – intermediate to advanced computer user
I was unsure whether to add GIMP as a recommendation due to its installation process. It wasn’t always as straight forward as it should have been, however it has become easier due to the introduction of an automated installer. Comparable to expensive graphic editors, GIMP has a wide range of tools including brushes, pencils, airbrush and cloning. It supports layers, rotation and flipping. GIMP is considered an excellent image editor for the intermediate to advanced computer user and can be downloaded from http://www.gimp.org/windows/ .