graphic design software

CollegeGrrl219

My stepmom presented the idea to me of a collaboration on a children's book. She would write the story, and I'd do the illustrations.

I have a degree in art, but I have no experience whatsoever with graphic design on a computer. Ok, I have a few hours of limited experience, but not much.

I could easily sketch out some pictures, but I wouldn't know what the best way to do it on the computer is. She is looking into getting me a Wacom tablet to draw on, but is this something I can draw out in photoshop, or is that mostly a program designed for editing photos?

I don't want to start with photos. I want to just start with a white screen and draw from there.

Any suggestions?

edielaura

I use Photoshop.  If I can't draw it in there, I'll do it by hand and scan it in.

raynes

I like Inkscape (open source version of Adobe Illustrator) for making little pictures.

The blogger behind Hyperbole and a Half does all her drawings in Paint with the trackpad on her laptop!

sannice1979

You can draw out anything in Photoshop but it takes some getting used to.  You can also draw and scan/import your drawing or draw on the Wacom tablet and import it.  If I had one (Wacom) that would be my choice.  Photoshop is crazy powerful and you can do anything with photos or make your own images.  I prefer Illustrator for making my own graphics because they are vectors and I can resize any way I want.  I thought it was harder at first but now I prefer it over Photoshop.  You can download a free trial (30 days) of either one on Adobe's site.

mairindubh

Hi CollegeGrrl,

The Wacom tablet will work in whatever app you use it with. Think of it as more like a computer mouse. Photoshop is mainly geared towards photomanipulation but you can use it to achieve some painterly effects too. I actually don't use Adobe products, I only use free software. E.g., Inkscape (vector illustration program similar to illustrator), Gimp (similar to photoshop), MyPaint (similar to Corel Painter).These tools will actually change the width of lines based on the pressure you apply to the pen on the tablet surface, which is pretty awesome.

For what you're trying to do, and because of your familiarity with non-computer art, I would recommend doing sketches in MyPaint first (you can download it here, it's free: http://mypaint.intilinux.com/?page_id=6) and then saving them as PNGs, and bringing them into a program like Inkscape to trace over them so you have super high-resolution, high quality art.

 Here's a video of mypaint so you can see what you'd be getting yourself into:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGL20ZYoIBU

I actually teach how to use this software to kids through different volunteer programs, and I have a course on Inkscape I've written. It walks you a bit through the difference between vector and bitmap graphics, which I think is probably the main thing you'll need to get a handle on for transferring your skills from analog to digital. All the lessons from the course are available for free here, please feel free to use them:

http://opensource.com/education/10/4/introducing-open-source-middle-school

 And here's a video of inkscape so you can see what'd you'd be getting into there :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag9N7F2friM

Hope this helps!! Good luck with your project, it sounds like a ton of fun!

Jess9289

You can get a wacom tablet that comes with photoshop and a few other drawing programs, just look at the box and it should say what programs it comes with. I have the Bamboo Fun and it came with Photoshop 7 and a painting program (I forget what it's called).

PUBoilerBride

I do all of my work in vector format, but for illustrations I would also recommend Painter (or the free version ) for illustrations- it's what I use when I want to "paint" in my free time and I'm not working on a project where I worry about the complexity of resizing needs.