Paint Shop Pro
Paint Shop Pro is widely
regarded as the poor man's Adobe PhotoShop. And for our money (having used
both of them), it's a much faster and more user-friendly product for
non-professional users. This award-winning software will save files in nearly
every major graphics format and perform a vast array of image manipulation
effects out of the box. Paint Shop Pro also allows you to carry out easy
file conversions from one file format to another and can make use of PhotoShop
plug-ins. The older Windows 3.x shareware version of Paint Shop Pro
(3.11 - still widely available) is probably the easiest program
to learn web graphics on and still carries out all the fundamental tasks
most webmaster need to do. From Version 4.x onwards, Jasc Software
began to imitate PhotoShop's more obscure interface, and swapped over from
shareware to trialware versions that lock up at the end of the evaluation
period.
LView Pro
LView Pro, like Paint
Shop (above) has been around for many years and has been continually enhanced
since its debut. It is now a full-featured graphics package in its own right.
The latest version offers an enormous range of features - and while we found
LView a trifle more obscure than PSP in some areas, it also has strengths
in several areas that PSP doesn't. LView integrates several specialized editors
that rival or surpass the features found in other high-end products including
an Image Editor, Image File Browser, Slide Show Viewer, Contact Sheet Builder,
Web Gallery Builder and Image Catalog. The program runs on Windows 95/98/NT
and is distributed as shareware (full registration is only $US50).
Well worth your evaluation.
Impact Software
Impact Software have
been distributing their products as shareware since 1988 and they
have two superb 30-day programs you can download directly from their site:
Microangelo98, a comprehensive Windows icon and cursor editor
for Win95/98/NT 4.0 (which was nominated as the Best Shareware Utility for
1996 by Ziff-Davis and the Best Graphics application the same year at the
Shareware Industry Awards); and Microangelo GIFted, a full-featured
GIF animation program. Impact Software also make several very attractive
windows theme and icon collections available for free download on their site,
along with Almanac - the shareware time zone/calendaring program that was
the firm's foundation product. If you need an icon/cursor editor that will
allow you to customise your PC to the nth degree (or a fairly unique GIF
animation program that takes a completely different approach to most GIF
animators currently on the market), it's very hard to go past these. |
