Free Photoshop alternative

[Mad78]

I fell on this in a magazine. Its a freeware with tons of function and just what people who don't have photoshop or paintshop and want to mod rebellion need.

[Darth-Griffin]

Great find

 

Thanks Mad78

[Mad78]

I am learning to use it at the moment. From what i understand it also includes a GIF animator.

[Darth-Griffin]

Please think about a quick walkthough on how to use the basic parts or create an animated gif using the program

 

I know i would be grateful for it

[Mad78]

Have you looked at the tutorials on the site?

i am mlimiting myself to the image creation bit for the moment so If you want i could wip up some introduction for that.

[Darth-Griffin]

That would be great

 

Its always better coming from a person than a tutorial. You are sure to make it easier to understand......

[Mad78]

Okay. I shall make it tomorrow that. way i will have the time to make screenshots and think of how i shall present things.

[Darth-Griffin]

Thanks Mad78

[Jahled]

That's a worthy post and find M78 given not everyone can afford to splash out £600-odd quid on the full-version of PS! The latest version, CS, is a little heavy on ram as well, which isn't going to be friendly on my present PC...

[Lord_La_forge]

Wow, great find here. I didn't know this one

[Mad78]

Maybe SWR.com could host it.

[Darth-Griffin]

If it wont then let me know and i will see about hosting it on my domain

[Jahled]

If it wont then let me know and i will see about hosting it on my domain

 

What exactly is your Galactic Core thingy all about dude?

[Darth-Griffin]

It started out as a place for a group of gamers to chat amongst each other. The game we were playing at the time was Galactic Civilizations, a space based strat game. The forum that was created by the game developers quickly became a den of idiots squabbling over anything they could, flaming each other and more

Because of this i created the first Galactic Core forum in my domain. However since then we have mostly all moved on to different games, but continue to use the forum for help and advice about many aspects of computers and gaming. All gamers are welcome and we offer private areas for groups as well. Our member numbers continue to rise from the starting 6 members and a new rpg based forum will be opening soon.

These days we tend to use the forums to introduce aour members to new games we are playing and invite conversation about these games.

When i first brought up the Rebellion game i was happily suprised to find that a few of the members have, or have had, the game. It was from that discussion that i found this forum

All are welcome to come, chat and ask for advise in they need it!

[Trejiuvanat]

Wow, great find here. I didn't know this one

 

I knew it though I never fot it to work properly. It's the program used in my Uni, and due to either bad installer or some corrupted files it kept crashing often. So I didn't use it there.

 

Having used Photoshop on my PC at home for some years, I didn't ever think about downloading it and trying it at home.

[Jahled]

It started out as a place for a group of gamers to chat amongst each other. The game we were playing at the time was Galactic Civilizations, a space based strat game. The forum that was created by the game developers quickly became a den of idiots squabbling over anything they could, flaming each other and more

Because of this i created the first Galactic Core forum in my domain. However since then we have mostly all moved on to different games, but continue to use the forum for help and advice about many aspects of computers and gaming. All gamers are welcome and we offer private areas for groups as well. Our member numbers continue to rise from the starting 6 members and a new rpg based forum will be opening soon.

These days we tend to use the forums to introduce aour members to new games we are playing and invite conversation about these games.

When i first brought up the Rebellion game i was happily suprised to find that a few of the members have, or have had, the game. It was from that discussion that i found this forum

All are welcome to come, chat and ask for advise in they need it!

 

Your problems sound typical! And is why I don't bother with all of this sim stuff, people get to cockey with all of this online 'i'm unidentifiable,' sort of crap, which erks me; because i've yet to have the pleasure of plunginging my knuckles through a troll's teeth... Big problems with the like elsewhere I stroll.

 

I joined btw, I shall examine what you guys are upto tomorrow...

[Darth-Griffin]

[Darth-Griffin]

Ooooh i just hit Sergeant

[Mad78]

Okay here is a little intro to GIMP

 

I shall oinly use pics from rebellion to amke it easy for you to find them.

Start by opening the default pic of a Y-Wing. You are going to see how easy it is to select precisely in GIMP.

In the window that the pic opens in. Look at the bottom left corner. There should be a small button with a square in it. Press it.

You will have noticed the pic has gone a kinda red shade. What is shaded in red is what is not selected.

Now use the paintbrush and paint in white over the areas that you want to select. See that the picture returns to its original color where you paint. If you make a mistake just use the black color to put some shade back.

paint over the Y-Wing using the paintbrush.

http://img194.exs.cx/img194/4840/gimptut54zh.th.png

 

Now press the little button on the left hand corner.

The shade has gone and the Y-Wings are selected!

Copy your selection (Ctrl+C)

Now create a new layer by pressing Layers>New layer

Select your new layer in the layer menu

It should be the one at the top.

(BTW the layer meun looks like this

http://img194.exs.cx/img194/1729/gimptut27tv.th.png)

Now press paste (Ctrl+V)

A new layer should appear

Now press the little anchor icon at the bottom of the Layer menu.

You can now delete the bottom layer.

You now have a set a Y-Wings ready to be put into another pic.

 

Proceed to the do the same for the X-Wing pic anf the Tie interceptor

Each time once you have finished each one save it in the xcf formet (GIMP format)

 

Now open this pic

http://img220.exs.cx/img220/2079/moncalattack9zf.png

Its neat but still a bit lame. Why don't we add a few fighters

 

But first lets prepare the pic

Do as you did for the fighter pics for the big Tie on the right but this time don't delete the bottom layer.

Now paste the x-wings into the pic.

I agree. They are a bit too big.

click Layers>Scale and size of Layer.

Change the size to 150 and 75

Now that the layer is more reasonnable size move it to where it is in the screenshot.

http://img229.exs.cx/img229/2091/gimptut93xn.png

Idealy the X-Wing should be behind the tie.

To give that effect simply click Layers>pile>lower the layer

http://img69.exs.cx/img69/9678/gimptut104xz.png

There that looks better

Proceed the same way for the other fighters and place them where you want. In the end you shouold have a rather cool looking pic.

http://img134.exs.cx/img134/1885/moncalattackbis4ns.png

Hope this helped you understand this cool program.

If you have questions just ask

[Grand_Admiral_Thrawn]

I really should get to know how to use my Photo Shop better, since I know it can be used for all sorts of great graphical ideas... I have the CS version, and I didn't know there was an issue with it and RAM. Still a great find Mad .

[Krytos]

Looks like an exellent program Mad, and it's free!

Wish I new about this program a few years back when my high school needed some graphical editing suites, it definetly looks an ample substitute for Photoshop.

[Guest JediIgor]

Maybe SWR.com could host it.

 

I'm afraid to inform you that this is the biggest Photoshop-alternative, it's also open source, and has been developed since 1995. I'm afraid they are quite bigger than our tiny site .

 

I have GIMP installed on a laptop of mine, but as long as I have access to Photoshop I really see no reason to switch . Not only would I lose all of my Photoshop plugins (wouldn't you know it, ) such as KPT and PlanetCell, I would also have to relearn the GIMP UI from scratch (and I heard horror stories about it being bad too).

 

There are also less tutorials, and it doesn't help things that I rarely make graphics anymore.

 

Of course for those churning out graphics (then again, I'm surprised if you're that in love with gfx, you haven't heard of it before), and you are looking for a legit program, GIMP is probably the way to go .

[Darth-Griffin]

Looks great

Did a few minor bits lasy night and it looked ok. Had a bit of trouble with the copy function as it did not want to work easily.

[Mad78]

I also had a few problems with that. But i found that when you anchored it into a new layer it worked great.

Whats great is that if you want to make reb cards easily just set the background as a layer and the character as another layer above it.

[Darth-Griffin]

I do want to try that

 

One question though! When i open a new layer to paster the selected image onto, what settings should i use? There are four or so choices from white to transparrent i believe.