For Mac users who would like to do more with graphics but find
Photoshop/Gimp out of their league, you should check out Keynote.
Keynote is part of the $99 iWork package (along with Pages and Numbers
- think Powerpoint, Word & Excel equivalents). But the graphics
capabilities of Keynote are almost equivalent to a 4th package -
graphics - being included in iWork.
Keynote looks on the surface to be a presentation tool (and a far more
impressive one than Powerpoint).
But if you need to use graphics, what about features like this: create
graphics with multiple layers, use partially transparent shapes, add
drop shadows, add reflections, create text logos, create frames for
pictures, remove backgrounds ...
Before Keynote this was hard, and pretty much required Gimp or
Photoshop (way too hard for most users, and in the case of Photoshop,
pricey as well)
There are some great videos on Apple's website that show some of the
graphics features of Keynote I am talking about (but not all of them).
http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/ (to see how to remove backgrounds
from images)
http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/#keynote (see Applying Image
Effects)
A key feature that is *not* documented very well is the ability to
create your graphics on a slide, and then export that slide as a
graphics file (tiff, jpg, png, gif). Once you have exported it as a
hi-res .tif file for example (this format retains transparent
backgrounds), you can use a free tool like ImageWell (from
extralean.com) to crop/resize the image and shrink the filesize to
whatever you need.
These features make it easy to create simple graphics such as webpage
headers, buttons, text logos and so on.
So I'm calling out Keynote as 'Photoshop for the rest of us'. No
doubt you can do heaps more with images using Photoshop than mere
mortals using Keynote. I respect Photoshop and realise it has
incredible capabilities. But for me the learning curve and investment
of time required has always been a barrier (let alone the price tag),
and you don't always want to hire a graphic designer if you want
something relatively simple.
The $99 price tag and the incredible ease of use that go with Keynote
make this an outstanding piece of software - it is even very good at
producing presentations :) (I originally bought it for the voice-over
recording facility, letting you easily publish a presentation with
voiceover to the web)
Numbers and Pages are excellent as well. If you are a seasoned
Microsoft Office user, you may well be surprised. Numbers in
particular has a refreshing approach to spreadsheets that is ideal
when you need to use a spreadsheet to present a business case or tell
a story of some kind. An associate of mine who recently switched from
Windows to a Mac laptop has jumped right into using Pages because he
finds it so much easier to use than Word.
So if you are interested in a great graphics tool 'for the rest of
us', check out Keynote.
Glenn.
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