I want to help an online friend learn digital scrapbooking, but I've no idea of her level of computer savviness and I think her budget is low.
What software would you recommend for a software and sites for learning?
I'm a longtime digital scrapper (2008) turned designer (2010), now mostly inactive due to disability so I'm not up to date on what's popular now, nor what's available...(can Adobe Elements still be purchased off-the-shelf?)
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
I have heard GIMP is free. I am not sure if that is true or not. I am not sure how easy it is to learn since I use PSE. I used to use storybook creator, I think it is now called Artisan. It is pretty easy to use. Hope that helps
Rose, if your friend is going for Elements, then I highly recommend the site Photoshop Elements User. If you subscribe to their digital magazine Photo Elements Techniques, you get access to every issue they have ever published (back to 2004), as well as a huge range of both written and video tutorials. You can download a free sample issue and video tutorials to try out. I don't know what the new subscriber gift is these days, but when I first subscribed, I received a video training course, as well as some software.
Well worth it!
I'd suggest elements as well ... it goes on sale about 3 times a year, you can download it free for a month to try it. Gimp is okay but it's clunky and can be frustrating. It will depend on what she wants to do as well .. does she just want to put together pages or does she want to do some designing etc? ... there is online software that will allow her to put her pages together if that is all she wants to do and they are usually free ... I know there's a thread in here somewhere that suggests which ones....PSP is usually reasonably priced as well although I've never used it.
Free scrapbooking software...
smilebox: http://preview.tinyurl.com/gv56zva
Scrapbook max: http://preview.tinyurl.com/zq5ymjq
Serif .. they have other drawing s/w too: http://www.serif.com/digital-scrapbooking/
Just make sure that wherever she downloads a piece of software that it's from the maker's site and not one of the secondary sites ... you can get all sorts of stuff installed along with your software from other sites and they can be difficult to erradicate once they are on your system. There are others and I haven't tried any of these but it's a start.
Well, just to add to the choices, there is also Paintshop Pro, which is comparable in price to PSE.
I use PSP and i teach PSP and it is just as easy as any other program one needs to learn. It often comes on sale. Right now, the sale is only 20% but i am sure they will have bigger discounts soon.
This is a great thread. Thanks for the information.
I'm a GIMP user, and I love it - but it definitely takes some set up (the defaults are for web design) and it's definitely got a learning curve. It's open source (that is, completely free) and can do most of what photoshop can do - so if budget and being able to do the more complex stuff are high priorities, it's definitely worth looking into. http://www.gimp.org/
I have Photoshop, but have also been a Paintshop Pro user for years. Paintshop Pro now comes in 64 bit. I have always purchased it after it goes on sale somewhere for about $29.99, but you usually won't find it on sale that low at Corel's website. There are tons of videos and tutorials on the Internet to help you learn how to use it.