What do you use?, why?

Hi all just wondering what the mahority of people use and why exactly. As i can only really use microsoft paint and microsoft image composer nothing else they all seem wierd.

Please post all the relevant inforamtion about the program and any links for resources for it. Thanks

I use:
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
ULEAD PhotoImpact

and why do you use them exactly?, any links for info?

Yep, I made a new topic for the links though.
http://www.ozzu.com/sutra31354.html#31354


Adobe Photoshop: Easy to use layer system and lots of filters & tricks you can use to make a plain image look awesome (see the competition section for some previous image comps we have ran)

Adobe Illustrator: Great for creating logo's

ULEAD PhotoImpact http://www.ulead.com : Has some useful tools that Photoshop doesn't have, or does them a lot easier. I like their slicer tool for creating image maps.

Cheers,
Rose

Photoshop (Cuz it rules)
GIMP (Cuz it almost rules)
Illustrator for things designed to be printed (because it's so much easier than trying to figure out Pixel:DPI ratios in Photoshop's image resize/resample settings, lol).

As far as hardware goes...

I've just got my regular Micro$oft Optical wheelmouse, but I also have one of those cheap lil JAM Studio graphics tablet doohickies that you can get on eBay for about 20 bucks. It may be cheap, but if you don't need to use one too often, and can't justify spending several hundred bucks on a REALLY good graphics tablet, this can be a LIFE saver, especially if you do a lot of work cutting backgrounds away from photos. That's my primary purpose with this graphics tablet, and it speeds up the process so much... A lot of the sites I do are for people in the reptile industry - community based sites, animal sales, product sales, and many of them want to include an animal or several in their layout and advertisements (both online and in print)..

In fact, there's an ad been running in Reptiles Magazine for the past year or so that I did for ReptileRap.com/Armstrong's Crickets using a collage of reptile photos I've taken, and my graphics pad proved invaluable for that. There's about half a dozen photos of animals on there that the background had to be removed from. With just the mouse, it would've easily taken me a week to get the fine detail & perfect cutouts that I needed. With my pen, I had it done in a just a few short hours.

For taking the photographs, I use (usually in no particular preference, just whatever I have handy)...

Sony Mavica FD-83
Sony Mavica CD-250
HP315 Photosmart (sucky camera, this one's a last resort for "snapshots" not decent quality photos)
Nikon N90s 35mm SLR camera (these prints are then scanned on my friend's HP scanner - not sure of the model - and they're scanned using Photoshop with the twain driver provided with the scanner). The N90s gives me the most control over my shot, as it's an SLR, but film & development can get expensive real quick, so I only use this when SUPER high quality is required. I'll get around this problem when I can spare 1500 bucks for a Nikon D100

I know you didn't ask for hardware, but I thought i'd give you the whole rundown. The JAM graphics pad works GREAT with photoshop, it's pressure sensitive (with varying degrees of accuracy on Win2K - although I heard it's flawless under '98SE, I haven't tried it in XP) and photoshop takes note of that fact and draws accordingly.

Photoshop for raster images, Illustrator for vector images, Flash for...well...Flash(there are alternatives, of course), and 3D Studio Max for 3D, obviously.

I teach PS, Ill and Flash at my local technical college (extremely adjunct) plus they are considered industry standards. 3D Studio MAX was the first 3D software I discovered (3D Studio ver 3 for DOS was the first ver).

I made a concerted effort to use The Gimp for a real project once and just couldn't justify using it again for any production work. Sorry open sorcerers

Yes that is also what I meant to say

I use Cinema 4D, which is a CAD package to 3D render my text, i also use it to create albums for my pictures by rendering them in diffrent situations to enhance the affect given. These are then imported into PSP 8 to modify, then a play around in Dream Weaver to create some Flash projects.

The reason i use them? Because they are reliable, fast, easy and efficient!

Cinema 4D is at http://www.maxon.net

How boring can i get LOL,

Not boring at all,,,,, its EXCITING!

Oh yeah, and I use Swish for my flash stuff (ok, so I cheat, but I'm not a big lover of flash, and rarely actually use it for anything, heh)

Well i use microsoft image composer 1.5 ^_^

I use it because i like the many different effects that you can use and its like a huge improvement on paint with a huge amount of new things.

Does anyone know if there is a version of microsoft image composer higher than 1.5?

Toodles

Haha, I am still using Paint Shop Pro 7. I bought it about three years ago and haven't had the motivation to learn how to use something better. Ah well, it works well enough for me!

yeah thats what i usually feel like with mi old microsoft image composer

I use adobe photoshop 7 for photo and image editing. I'll use Illustrator occasionally but not too often.