MICHAEL M.
independent Music Producer/artist at independent label F. entertainment looking for collaboration
what is a good photo editer for a album or cd cover?
Hello everyone I'm a rap artist from mississippi and I'm working on a new project. My cd is quite a story and live animation. So I want my mixtape to be as visual catching as possible. What is a good photo editing software? I've heard of photoshop by adobe but I've found nothing but trial versions or versions that is try or buy. Any ideas?
Answers (8)
Ryan W.
Recruiter at Alliance HealthCare Services
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There are two other options that I know of that may help you. You can use Google's Picasa. It's pretty good, but not as powerful as Photoshop. The other alternative is www.picknic.com. With that one, you set up a username and password, upload your pics and edit them. Both are free, and both are pretty useful and can be powerful in their own way. Hope this helps.
Clarification added June 22, 2009:
Correction, I messed up on the webaddress.
www.picnik.com
Chris S.
Making networks really work for small business.
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GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program, opensource and free.
There's also Windows installers if you're not running 'nix.
Links:
Paul W.
Technologist, Advocate, Architect, Consultant
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+1 Chris. GIMP is free, widely used, and almost as powerful as Photoshop. There is an ongoing debate as to which one is easier to use. I take no sides in the debate; they're both tough to learn. There are as many free tutorials for GIMP as there are for Photoshop.
Because I'm cheap, I use GIMP.
Gimp is also available on OSX, which Chris neglected to mention.
Picasa and picnik are great for manging photos as photos. I highly recommend Picasa for keeping track of your digital snapshots, but unless you are just pasting a photograph with maybe some lettering for your cover graphic, it's not the tool for you. You will need something to generate drawings and graphics.
Also, look at inkscape as a freebie tool for doing line drawings and illustrations, which are frequently mixed in like synth rhythms as the base layer for cover art. Inkscape is not nearly as good as Corel or Illustrator (yet), but it is free.
Best,
~ Paul
Links:
Clarification added June 22, 2009:
Also check out Scribus as a tool for doing complex page layout for booklets and whatnot. It generally replaces tools like Framemaker or Quark. It has its quirks, but it worked for me when doing fliers, posters and glossies that needed offset printing, full bleed and other stuff that other common tools (like Word or Publisher) don't deal with well.
Photoshop is by far my favorite, but you do have to fork up the cash.
Matthew L.
VP Operations at Gracenote
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If you are budget constrained do a search for GIMP, a free image editing program.
Links:
Dave M.
Professional trade show booth traffic builder and party entertainer. Corporate and private sector events.
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Photoshop elements...
I have nothing to add as far as editors are concerned, but be aware that typically photo editors and raster image editing programs like GIMP and Photoshop lack some of the capabilities that are good to have for desktop publishing. Depending on who's handling your printing, this may not be an issue, but programs like Illustrator and it's freeware cousins give a fine degree of control over sizing, position, and palette that raster programs generally lack.
Again, if you're printing out to a color laser or taking it to kinkos and cutting all your inserts by hand then don't sweat it. If you want the best result from a service like Diskmakers, then consider at least finding someone who can do the final layout in a vector based program.
I've published at both of those levels, and view both types of programs as indispensable.
I suggest you to use photoacape, which is a easy-to-use Photo Editing software that could enhance photos, combine, split, pick colour, merge photos to one page. Photoscape is not only a photo viewer but also an excellent editor which has function of resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming
http://www.sharewareguide.net/Audio-Multimedia/Capture-Tools/photoscape.html
