Buttons & Bows

[lennyt]

This is my personal opinion on this and I would be interested in hearing from all of you out there.

I think all of these "graphic editing programs" out there are leaning more and more towards making buttons & bows and creating web pages then editing and improving photos. With the big boom in scanners and digital cameras we need more tools for the Digital Darkroom. Most of the photos we shoot or scan are far from perfect and we need all the help we can get. What do you think???

[lennyt]

This is my personal opinion on this and I would be interested in hearing from all of you out there.

I think all of these "graphic editing programs" out there are leaning more and more towards making buttons & bows and creating web pages then editing and improving photos. With the big boom in scanners and digital cameras we need more tools for the Digital Darkroom. Most of the photos we shoot or scan are far from perfect and we need all the help we can get. What do you think???

[tommyknocker]

Ulead PhotoImpact 6, Jasc PaintShop Pro 7, Adobe Photoshop 6, Micrografix Picture Publisher 8, Corel PhotoPaint 9 Digital Camera Edition, MGI PhotoSuite IV They are all great for any photo manipulation. correcting, cropping etc.....
What do you want them to do?

Randy

[jody478]

um.. well then, I kinda see your point, but I agree with Tommyknocker. I have PhotoImpact and Photoshop, along with a couple Xara programs and a bunch of HTML editors. The Photoshop 5 and Photo Impact create graphics AND do image editing. So..What DO you want the programs to do? Give you a song and dance?? *hehe*

[dk_art]

I kindof think the photo manipulation tools are pretty much peaked. What more can they do! If you look at the actual retouch tools in PhotoImpact, you can do plenty with them. Alos the tone map, hue and sturation and other functions allow vast alteration of your photos. I suppose there's always room for improvement for any set of tools, but I think PI would be better off improving in the vector drawing (draw shapes like using a freehand pen), transparency, fills (adjustable image textures please!!!). Improvement for print work would be good too.

David K
www.dkingdesign.com

[michaeLAngeles]

I haven't seen any truly great web pages designed with any of these software programs. They all have nice features, specially PI and XARA X, but the emphasis is on making web pages that no one will ever see. I too would like to see better software aimed at creating artwork and editing digital photos for my own personal use.

[dk_art]

Well I was specifically referring to editing photos. As far as creation of images there is improvement to be made. But for pure retouching tools for improving photos, I just don't know what's left to add in the line of tools for that purpose.

Although it's possible to make a working site with PI, I prefer to use it mainly for the design and then use the image slicer to export it into slices and the table structure. Then I use my web program ( Web Editor 4 ... www.namo.com ) to add the code stuff and all that.

David K
www.dkingdesign.com

[Thomas.Sorrill]

Actually, there are loads of sites designed with these software...because without the software, there'd be no graphics to put on the net. All of the graphics for talkgraphics were created in Xara X (main page then imported to Flash for some post work). Xara.com is pure Xara X in graphics design. Yeah, I know, they are our companies so we have an obligation to use Xx. But quite a few heavy weights use Xara X. NASA does it for some of their design work, MCI for their intranet design, the Fed for their sites, KPMG, etc, etc.

In terms of photo editing, a lot of the bitmap editors have reached their maturity. What other tools can they throw in for editing? There are so many already, it's almost overkill. Perhaps the only way they can go now is moving towards vector work, better Web-related features and perhaps more integration with digital photography needs (indexing, albums, categorizing, thumbnailing????)

T