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"Never mess in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup." -If I ever GM a game that has a dragon, he/she will say this.
Price: Free (Win only)
Medium: 2d Vector
Description: a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text. Similar to Inkscape and Illustrator.
Pros: Like Paint.NET, a windows based drawing program but for vectors.
Cons: Can do impressive stuff, but no styles and takes a long time to learn.
Where to find: http://www.creativedocs.net/
Medium: 2d Vector
Description: a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text. Similar to Inkscape and Illustrator.
Pros: Like Paint.NET, a windows based drawing program but for vectors.
Cons: Can do impressive stuff, but no styles and takes a long time to learn.
Where to find: http://www.creativedocs.net/
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Price: Free (Win / Linux)
Medium: 2D
Description: Multi-scene vector drawing tool. Similar to Creative.Doc and Inkscape.
Pros: Competent Editor, can export to SVG,
Cons: Help is almost non-existent, and be prepared to hit UNDO a lot.
Where to find: CNET
Medium: 2D
Description: Multi-scene vector drawing tool. Similar to Creative.Doc and Inkscape.
Pros: Competent Editor, can export to SVG,
Cons: Help is almost non-existent, and be prepared to hit UNDO a lot.
Where to find: CNET
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Price: Free Version / 29 Euros for Artweaver Plus
Medium: 2d natural media.
Description (copied from web page): Artweaver allows you to paint creatively with the help of a huge range of painting tools. You can create sketches from photos or just experiment with colors. For professional users, Artweaver offers layers, group layers and support for the PSD file format. It is also possible to load and run Photoshop compatible filters (only Artweaver Plus).
Pros: Paid version saves to Photoshop format with high compatibility. Can create images as a group event and replay edit them later.
Cons: Keyboard shortcuts are odd (but can be changed in Plus version).
Where to find: http://www.artweaver.de/
Medium: 2d natural media.
Description (copied from web page): Artweaver allows you to paint creatively with the help of a huge range of painting tools. You can create sketches from photos or just experiment with colors. For professional users, Artweaver offers layers, group layers and support for the PSD file format. It is also possible to load and run Photoshop compatible filters (only Artweaver Plus).
Pros: Paid version saves to Photoshop format with high compatibility. Can create images as a group event and replay edit them later.
Cons: Keyboard shortcuts are odd (but can be changed in Plus version).
Where to find: http://www.artweaver.de/
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Price: Varies. One day it's $US 99, next day the just to be superceded version is marked down to$39.99.
Medium: 2d
Description: Bitmap editor with some vector capability and natural media component. Very similar to Photoshop but cheaper.
Pros: Decent vector system (Fonts can be bitmapped or vector, and you can make Dingbats into shapes), has tubes (like Painter's hoses), a fair range of filters and can use Ps compatible ones, good range of export wizards (especially GIF / JNP / PNG), and you can customise workspaces with whatever manus, toolbars, icons or shortcuts you want!
Cons: No CMYK support. Now owned and updated by Corel, so newer versions are bloatware and it secretly installs various crap on your system when that you probably don't need (read How to improve Paintshop Pro for details).
Where to find: Corel
Medium: 2d
Description: Bitmap editor with some vector capability and natural media component. Very similar to Photoshop but cheaper.
Pros: Decent vector system (Fonts can be bitmapped or vector, and you can make Dingbats into shapes), has tubes (like Painter's hoses), a fair range of filters and can use Ps compatible ones, good range of export wizards (especially GIF / JNP / PNG), and you can customise workspaces with whatever manus, toolbars, icons or shortcuts you want!
Cons: No CMYK support. Now owned and updated by Corel, so newer versions are bloatware and it secretly installs various crap on your system when that you probably don't need (read How to improve Paintshop Pro for details).
Where to find: Corel
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Price: Free Starter version (but you will probably have to register) / 68 pounds for the latest offering
Medium: vector
Description: Vector drawing package. Has a lot of features similar to Illustrator.
Pros: Has a number of features very similar to Illustrator. If you wait for a while free copies of older versions will turn up on computer magazines that include disks.
Cons: Be prepared for constant mailing about how great their products are. Software is functional, but tends to follow other company's product's lead.
Where to find: Serif
Medium: vector
Description: Vector drawing package. Has a lot of features similar to Illustrator.
Pros: Has a number of features very similar to Illustrator. If you wait for a while free copies of older versions will turn up on computer magazines that include disks.
Cons: Be prepared for constant mailing about how great their products are. Software is functional, but tends to follow other company's product's lead.
Where to find: Serif
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Price: Free / $99
Medium: 2d natural (well, sort of) media
Description: What were they thinking?
From http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/TwistedBrush-Review-30832.shtml
PROS
This program is small, easy enough to use for most of us, and the built in content is extremely rich. It can load and save layered PSD and TIFF files, and everything comes for an extremely competitive price that you'll have to pay if you want to continue using it after the trial period. The last thing that needs to be mentioned here is that it uses layers, and I am sure that you'll find at least twice more goodies than I did!
CONS
First bad thing that hit me was that TwistedBrush has a lot of keyboard shortcuts missing, which takes away a lot of the speed that can be achieved using them. The help contents is insufficient, at least, since "absent" would be too rough. Most of the interface should be polished to make it look like a program from this century, and the speed could be improved, I am sure of that.
Where to find: Pixarra
Medium: 2d natural (well, sort of) media
Description: What were they thinking?
From http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/TwistedBrush-Review-30832.shtml
PROS
This program is small, easy enough to use for most of us, and the built in content is extremely rich. It can load and save layered PSD and TIFF files, and everything comes for an extremely competitive price that you'll have to pay if you want to continue using it after the trial period. The last thing that needs to be mentioned here is that it uses layers, and I am sure that you'll find at least twice more goodies than I did!
CONS
First bad thing that hit me was that TwistedBrush has a lot of keyboard shortcuts missing, which takes away a lot of the speed that can be achieved using them. The help contents is insufficient, at least, since "absent" would be too rough. Most of the interface should be polished to make it look like a program from this century, and the speed could be improved, I am sure of that.
Where to find: Pixarra
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
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"Never mess in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup." -If I ever GM a game that has a dragon, he/she will say this.
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
From the Feature page at the homesite.
Spatial resolution-independence
Most elements are vector-based, and all layers are parametrically generated, hence even when changing the target resolution of a project, the only pixelation will occur in imported raster images, not the built-in components.
Temporal resolution independence
Animation-keyframes are automatically interpolated by the computer, resulting in smooth motion
High Dynamic-Range Imaging (HDRI)
By using floating-point math in the image calculations, HDRI processing allows canvases to internally understand a far greater range of pixel luminance, resulting in better lighting effects, and improved color composition.
Pentablet-friendly tools
The draw tool already reads the pressure sensitivity channel off your favorite tablets, for natural line weighting, and more to come!
Artist-oriented design
While it may not be obvious in this early state, Synfig (and its proprietary predecessors) has been designed from the ground up with animation workflow in mind.
Path-based Gradients
Unlike purely SVG-based vector software, and most consumer-level animation programs, Synfig has full support for gradient paths - gradients that follow along a drawn shape. This allows artists to easily add soft shading to animation without the trouble of painting it onto every frame.
Layers
Synfig supports a multitude of layers of various types; geometric, gradients, filters, distortions, transformations, fractal and a few others.
Most elements are vector-based, and all layers are parametrically generated, hence even when changing the target resolution of a project, the only pixelation will occur in imported raster images, not the built-in components.
Temporal resolution independence
Animation-keyframes are automatically interpolated by the computer, resulting in smooth motion
High Dynamic-Range Imaging (HDRI)
By using floating-point math in the image calculations, HDRI processing allows canvases to internally understand a far greater range of pixel luminance, resulting in better lighting effects, and improved color composition.
Pentablet-friendly tools
The draw tool already reads the pressure sensitivity channel off your favorite tablets, for natural line weighting, and more to come!
Artist-oriented design
While it may not be obvious in this early state, Synfig (and its proprietary predecessors) has been designed from the ground up with animation workflow in mind.
Path-based Gradients
Unlike purely SVG-based vector software, and most consumer-level animation programs, Synfig has full support for gradient paths - gradients that follow along a drawn shape. This allows artists to easily add soft shading to animation without the trouble of painting it onto every frame.
Layers
Synfig supports a multitude of layers of various types; geometric, gradients, filters, distortions, transformations, fractal and a few others.
I have to admit that I haven't tried Synfig of late, because when I first downloaded it I had a small screen (everything looked but and cluttered) and a less powerful PC. My go back and see, though I'm currently fiddling with Illustrator (which is not cheap, but came with my student CS5 package).
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
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Mind, you version XII uses pretty much the same gradient tool as forever. The main advantage of it is that it can be applied to vectors:
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
Some of us are born lucky
Some of us are born lucky
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Laura Ess
Laura Ess
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