Layout and Design

I should say something here about software and plug my favorites.  There is no argument from me that products like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Pagemaker and Quark are the best around, but personal financial limitations as well as the fact that I have worked in small rural churches for the past 9 years prevent me from having frequent access to the premiere image editing and graphic design software ever known to mankind.  So I try to make due with what I can.  Let me start with what I think for the money is the next best alternative to Photoshop and that is JASC Paint Shop Pro.  I am currently using version 5 but plan to make the $100 upgrade to PSP 7 soon.  This program has a professional interface and can use just about any Photoshop plug-in filter you can find.  PSP usually comes packaged with a very good .GIF animation program.  But as PSP is not top of the line, I use other programs to fill in the gaps.

For vector based graphics, I use Corel Presentations (which is a combination graphics program / PowerPoint type presentation software) and Microsoft Photodraw.  Photodraw has a great selection of proprietary special effects and filters.  Corel Presentations is great for adding vector based text for very clear text incorporation into an image.

For basic ad layout and flyers where text needs to fit around and among images, I use Corel WordPerfect.  Microsoft Word is a great word processor but feels to me very clunky when handling images.  WordPerfect seems to me a very smooth combination of  a word processor and a desktop publishing program.  Images and text can be placed into boxes and moved around the page relatively freely.  I also use Microsoft Publisher with Word.

Programs that I don't like are ones with these interfaces that feel like they are holding your hand through the whole creation process.  Adobe Photodeluxe is like that, click here if you want to make a greeting card, click here if you want to put a pretty frame around your pretty picture.  I loaded the filter and effect plug-ins from Adobe Photodeluxe and then removed the program.

I think I am a good amateur enthusiast in graphic design and photo-editing who longs to see what he could create given access to professional tools.

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