If you are looking to get involved in graphic design you are going to need a top notch graphics programme to give you all the flexibility that you need. Of course you can copy clipart from various sources, and some of it may be free or only cost a small amount, but you will stil need to manipulate the images for your document or web page in order to obtain the best effect.
The industry leader in graphics programmes is Adobe with their Photoshop product. In fact, so ubiquitous is this software that “to photoshop” has become a verb in it’s own right in a similar way as “to google” is used to mean “to search”. If an article has been “photoshopped” it usually means that it has been doctored in some way, removing or adding elements that were not originally in the photo. Most model pictures in glossy magazines have been photoshopped, removing unwanted lines or wrinkles or slimming down the waist.
The full photoshop programme is quite expensive. However, for the beginner there is a cut down version of the programme called Photoshop Essentials. This includes all the major aspects of the photoshop graphics software that the novice user will need.
An alternative graphics programme is Gimp. Gimp is free to use and is available to download free of charge. Gimp stands for GNU Image manipulation Programme. Gimp is not nearly as refined in its user interface as Photoshop and novice users may have difficult navigating around the various tools, but as a free programme it does a good job at offering some competition to Adobe Photoshop.
Other graphics programmes include Serif’s Drawplus and Photoplus software and Corel with Paintshop Pro and Corel Draw. Prices for graphics software can vary enormously and it’s definitely worth shopping around for the best price.
