The Advanced Class

You know me, I am big on free things, especially free things for your computer which can help make you a better, more versatile artist while not costing you the Defense budget for fiscal 2011.

And I found one of those things, or rather I got tipped to one from a magazine subscription. You see the nice folks at PC magazine have a Net presence. They have a page and a blog and email alerts all of which is fine and not particularly interesting to a working artists except when one of them leads to a deal which you can't refuse. No, it does not have anything to do with waking up with a horse head in your bed, which you have to admit is pretty disgusting not to mention likely to upset the staff and so we'll just leave that to the ethnic gangs of the last century and move right on.

In one of my emails this week I got a notice of Ten Indispensable Free Downloads. Now even though I asked them to send me the emails I am pretty skeptical about anything people brag on and claim is wonderful and free, not to mention that clicking on unsolicited email links is a really good way to get a virus and nobody wants to wind up with a social disease so I am very careful about casual clicking, but this time, they were right. It is wonderful and amazing and useful and free and that my friends is pretty hard to beat!

What you ask is this wonder and well you might and I will tell you because you are willing to listen, wanting to listen, waiting to listen, it's PhotoScape.

http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php

This is free photo editing software that is cheap, (That's the free part), easy, powerful, and flexible.

Now I know all of you have gone out and downloaded Faststone Image Viewer, cause I've been harping on it for a while and it's free and fast and good, but it doesn't do everything. You do remember it is free?

PhotoScape is a more powerful editor which does even more than Faststone Image Viewer. Yes, painter I am talking to you. Take a look at this.



Now I am sure your grasp of anatomy and shadow is much more refined than mine. I just started doing this after I moved here and you guys have been doing it for years and years and years, okay not that many years but sometimes even you must wonder where the edges are as you sketch up the base image for a new painting. PhotoScape can do this for you, use the Filter menus, select pictorialization, the colored pencil and there waiting behind the colors is the frame you need to hang your paint on.



It works for things other than people too. Take this blade of grass and using the filters make it into something new and different.



Gives a whole new look to the gas shack at Charleston Boat Basin, but then that's what you need sometimes, a whole new look.

PhotoScape can do a lot of things. I picked some that I find useful but I think you should download your own copy and play around with it. It's free, if you don't like it, uninstall it.

The only flaw I can find in this marvelous program is a small one but pretty annoying, the resize function is not at all user friendly and flexible. You have to know a lot about linear pixels and that is a topic for another day, so let's just say it stinks.

But for those of you who have been struggling to learn GIMP, the powerful Linux rival of the great and powerful Adobe PhotoShop, the learning curve is a bear. Either way you go you're in for a battle and then there's the price, PhotoShop can do anything if you learn to use it and happen to be willing to mortgage your house. But PhotoScape can play with either of the big guys and come out pretty close. The learning curve is flat and the price is right, and for resizing you already have Faststone, right?

One last thing, if you do try it and like it, donate something. The only way this powerful free editor can stay free is if the folks who use it pay the guys who thunk it up and keep thunking. They only ask ten dollars and I can tell you this software is worth two lattes any day.

http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/donate.php