Free Adobe graphics software

If you haven't heard yet, Adobe is offering one of the older versions of its graphic suite series, specifically CS2.  This page at Gizmodo gives more information about it.  Adobe produces some very useful applications, like Acrobat Reader (now an digital document standard), Flash and Shockwave.

Although I'm not a big fan of Adobe's graphics apps (they're fairly expensive), I was interested in seeing what's in the suite and what else is available.  So in addition to CS2, I now have Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 for producing Acrobat documents and forms, and Adobe Premiere Pro 2 for editing videos. Here's the link to the download page; remember to grab the serial number.

Some problems were encountered when installing the downloads on my OS (operating system) -- Windows 7, 64-bit.  It seems the app was written before this version of Windows (and possibly before Windows Me), because the installer wouldn't accept the folder designation "Program Files (x86)."  It's easy enough to direct the installer to a different folder, but getting past the "insert next disk" was impossible.

Here's my work-around.  Burn each downloaded disk to a CD.  After installing disk 1, go to the folder on C-drive you created, and find the file "Setup.exe."  It may be in a sub-folder created by the installer called "Adobe Creative Suite 2.0."  Run the setup and select one of the apps listed as not installed; start its installation and insert the disk requested when prompted.  After going through the list and installing each of the applications (one at a time worked best), run setup one more time to verify that all the apps are installed.

This is what the directory looks like when all the installations are done (includes Premier Pro, not in the CS2 package).

Hope this works for you.  You're welcome to comment.

-- Marge

Tools for holiday artwork

Starting with a look at the free holiday clip art that's available online, I found that the word for today is brushes.  Since I can't seem to find a site that defines what they are, here goes.

Digital art software comes in mostly two categories, vector (for line drawings) and raster (for working with bitmap images, like photos).  Brushes are usually associated with raster graphics programs; however, Gimp brushes can be in three forms: animation, raster and vector.  

Essentially a brush changes the shape, and possibly other attributes, of your cursor.  In a way a brush acts like a rubber stamp (some programs have a separate feature called rubber stamp). Most art software comes preloaded with a variety of brushes.  You can also download additional ones and/or make your own.  Most of the additional brushes available online are compatible with Photoshop.  Since Photoshop, an Adobe product, and PhotoPaint and Painter, Corel products, are both proprietary software, I'll be talking about Gimp brushes today.  Gimp can use Photoshop brushes and is open source -- version 2.8 is the latest and it's very good.

There's a very long, but good, tutorial on using brushes in Gimp on YouTube. In fact there are many Gimp tutorials on YouTube.

Below is a sampling of the brushes you can download and install for use in Gimp.

All-free-download vector brushes for non-commercial use (Exercise caution clicking at this site -- it's closely tied with Shutter Stock):  

***

***

Obsidian Dawn, byline "digital design resources":

***

***

Brushlovers, byline "amazing free Photoshop brushes":

***

***

If you're wondering about Gimp and Photoshop compatibility, here's an article from Chron, small business division.

Photoshop may be the industry standard for digital graphics, but I dislike working with it.  My preferred money-sink is Corel.  But seeing the video above on Gimp, I'm beginning to wonder about switching.

-- Marge