I am curious which program, and competitors in the same family, is used to create these kinds of images. I am trying to find the best paint/photo/illustrator software that suits me best for:
doing simple abstract art like doing it with a paint brush and canvas (twistedbrush seems pretty good w/out being overwhelming to learn)
doing logo type work that would be more mathmatically in nature.
altering photos and prints (I suppose Photoshop is best?)
I don’t have much knowledge about the difference between vetor vs bitmap so my vague understanding is that Adobe Illustrator is for logo stuff that would have more angle type graphics, Photoshop is more for messing with photos and I don’t know what you would call something that was designed to be nothing more than a digital canvas and oils.
I have a related thread which I got some great input on (thanks) and I downloaded about 7-8 different ones and played with them until I narrowed it down to a couple of the free ones, but now I want to get a better understanding of what are the differences of the different apps I listed above and recommondations for which brand in any particular area.
Vector editing (comparison): Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Expression Design, Inkscape
These are good for logos and such (#2)
“Paint” programs: Corel Painter and the others listed in your other thread. Oh, and I forgot to mention Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro, the easiest-to-use and overall best experience I’ve had with a painting program – try the trial!
These are good for recreating the sketching experience on your computer.
There is some usually overlap between these programs, but generally it’s best to choose the right program for your job.
As for the differences between these types of programs, broadly:
On the technical side, they differ in how they store and manipulate images (as dots or pixels versus mathematically defined sets of curves). Vector editing is good for relatively simple logos and such because they can be scaled up and down without loss of quality, but photorealistic images are usually not done as vectors because the number of curves and lines required would be computationally impractical.
From an artist’s point of view, the drawing tools will behave differently from program to program. The painting programs, for example, recreate the canvas experience by offering you digital versions of the watercolor brush, markers, crayons, oil, etc., whereas an image editing program might just offer you a standard paint tool that just draws big, ugly splotches of color (which can be customized, with some work, to look like other tools, hence the “overlap”).
To add to what Reply said, lots and lots of people use Photoshop not just for photo and image editing, but for image creation from scratch. These images can look like impressionist paintings or very precise, stylized ink drawings or anything inbetween. One thing that some artists do is employ a variety of input devices over and above mouse-and-keyboard.
Oh, and I can’t recommend a drawing tablet enough if you want to do some painting. Something like the Bamboo should be enough to get you started. It doesn’t cost a whole lot and gets you a lot more precision (in terms of brush direction, pressure sensitivity, and plain ol’ finger dexterity) than a mouse.
