Not sure if this is the right place for this...

[Mathim]

I need some help. I'm trying to edit some pictures for an RP and I need either Adobe Pagemaker (I know it's old but it's the only one I learned how to use back in high school) or Photoshop. But I'm poor so I can't buy them. Is there anyone who can tell me where I might get at least a demo version or download an old, outdated version for free, or anything like that? I don't need anything fancy, all I need to do is crop and resize things, that's all.

Again, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but if it's not, please tell me if it's moved elsewhere so I don't lose track.

[jouzinka]

I would think on using GIMP. It's not as good as Photoshop, but very much nears it. And it's entirely for free. :)

[Mathim]

I have no idea what GIMP is or where to find it. But I guess if I google it I can find something about it. Thanks.

*EDIT*

Okay, it's some GNU-something, I'm not really tech-savvy, but I found it. I'd never even heard of that til today. But I went to the site and it was impossible to download from there since it kept redirecting me to a million different places but I went to this other link on google called cnet.com and I found it there. You'd think the site itself would be the easiest to obtain it from, but no. Jerks. But I don't need to do anything fancy with it, like I said, so hopefully it'll be sufficient for what I need.

[consortium11]

Paint.net is what I normally use... it's a pretty simple version of paintshop, completely free and I find it far simpler to use than gimp. IIRC it's a simple download from the site... sends you to one of the big download hosting sites, but still easy easy easy.

[Lithos]

If you only need to crop and resize without fancies, get a good viewer such as IrfanView. It can do everything that you need. Gimp does everything that photoshop does, and can run photoshop plugins and brushes, but it does not support color profiling to publishing grade printers.

[Mathim]

I tried GIMP and it was terrible, I wasn't doing what I wanted, like when I tried to crop it cropped the wrong part of the picture and just kept screwing things up.

Okay, so paint.net and IrfanView...I'll try both of those but if anyone knows anything else, I'm still all ears.

[Xillen]

Again, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but if it's not, please tell me if it's moved elsewhere so I don't lose track.

The Help board is for anything, not just for forum related stuff, so this would be the right place to ask. :)

[Mathim]

Cool. Good to know.

Anyway, I still haven't been successful using any of these already-mentioned programs so any more help would be appreciated...

[MusicNeverDies]

We have a few skilled users of such programs here (Krysia and minkflavoredcheese come to mind) who have threads in the Art section, and help make sigs and avatars. Perhaps you could ask one of them to edit the photo for you, if you can't seem to find a way on your own.

Edit: If you just want crop and resize jobs, then try getting a free account at Photobucket.com. They have a built in option for both of those as well as a few other good effects. you just have to upload the picture and then get working.

[Dakota]

Photoshop aint cheap

[Mathim]

Hence the point of asking for cheap knock-offs or alternatives. I never actually used Photoshop before, I was hoping some kind of decade-old Pagemaker would be available somewhere.

[Trieste]

I agree with Music; they seem the soundest options.

The only image-editing software that is free that I know of is the Photoshop stuff. You can also go to a photo developing center at CVS and get a print resized, etc, for fairly cheap.

MS Paint is an option.

[Mathim]

MS Paint is what I'd used before but it's god-awful for resizing. That's it's only real problem, actually. What I want is something where I can crop and resize without being confused about the dimensions, because Paint is really hard to gauge dimensions in.

[MusicNeverDies]

MS Paint is what I'd used before but it's god-awful for resizing. That's it's only real problem, actually. What I want is something where I can crop and resize without being confused about the dimensions, because Paint is really hard to gauge dimensions in.

Free account on photobucket. It'll host it for ya, too. *nods*

[Mathim]

You can't ENLARGE pictures on there as far as I've seen, though. I don't need to shrink images, I need to blow them up without them looking too crappy. Besides, their editing isn't exactly user friendly anyway.

BTW, I absolutely ADORE that avatar picture you have. Where'd you get it, and can I find it in color?

[MusicNeverDies]

You can't ENLARGE pictures on there as far as I've seen, though. I don't need to shrink images, I need to blow them up without them looking too crappy. Besides, their editing isn't exactly user friendly anyway.

BTW, I absolutely ADORE that avatar picture you have. Where'd you get it, and can I find it in color?

Ah, enlarge bigger. Nope, doesn't do that. I find it user friendly but I've used it a good deal.

I just found it on google, and havn't seen it in color, sorry!

[Mathim]

What I meant is, if you use MS Paint to do it, and you save it, if you haven't enlarged it to the entire size of the page, you'll see all the blank white space around the image you're trying to work with. If it was with Pagemaker or Photoshop (ideally) then no matter the size of the image on the page, you could at least save it so that it doesn't have to take up the entire page and it won't have all the blank space junk around it when you upload it to photobucket.

[Trieste]

Paint has matting on the bottom of it. Before you insert the picture into paint, you can resize that matting to be smaller than the incoming picture, and then when you paste it in, the matting expands to fit.

[Caeli]

GIMP isn't actually that bad. It takes getting used to, but it really does have all the basic functions that most people will ever need from Photoshop. >_>

[HairyHeretic]

Have you tried searching TUCOWS for image editing software? Everything on there tends to be demos or freeware.

[Mathim]

Never heard of it before, but I'll try it out. Tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or maybe later in the week then that...god, Summer semester sucks. I'll let you know if it works or not and then possibly ask for more help.

[Mathim]

Paint has matting on the bottom of it. Before you insert the picture into paint, you can resize that matting to be smaller than the incoming picture, and then when you paste it in, the matting expands to fit.

Can you explain exactly how to do that matting thing?

[Xillen]

When you open a new file in MS Paint (or right when you started it up), you get a large white box. If you hover your mouse over the very bottom right corner of that white box (make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom and the right before trying this), it should change into a resizing cursor. Now drag it to the top and left, until the image is really small. Then, if you paste the image in from somewhere else, it'll ask if you want to resize. Say yes.

Alternatively, instead of dragging the corner, you could press Ctrl-E, and set both height and width to 1, before pasting your image.