Choosing Graphics Software

You can use almost any computer graphics program to create graphics images for your web pages, from the simple paint program that comes free with your computer's operating system to an expensive professional program such as Adobe Photoshop. If you have a digital camera or scanner attached to your computer, it probably came with some graphics software capable of creating web page graphics.

By the Way

Adobe Photoshop is without a doubt the cream of the crop when it comes to image-editing programs. However, it is expensive and quite complex if you don't have experience working with computer graphics. Adobe now offers a more affordable, easier to use version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements, which you might want to take a look at. For more information on Adobe's products, visit the Adobe web site at http://www.adobe.com/.

If you already have software you think might be good for creating web graphics, try using it to do everything described in this hour. If it can't do some of the tasks covered here, it probably won't be a good tool for web graphics. In that case, you might want to consider downloading the evaluation version of Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop Elements if you're using a Windows computer, or Adobe Photoshop Elements if you're using a Macintosh. For Windows users, another new and very interesting image program is Google Picasa, which is available free at http://picasa.google.com/. Picasa is Google's entry into the image-editing market, and it offers some unusual features not found in other image editors. However, Picasa is better suited toward organizing and editing digital photographs, as opposed to creating web graphics from scratch. Even so, it's a powerful (and free) tool that is worth checking out.

Try It Yourself

An excellent and inexpensive program that provides everything you're likely to need for web images is Paint Shop Pro from Corel. If you are using a Windows computer, you can download a fully functional evaluation copy of Paint Shop Pro before reading the rest of this lesson. (Macintosh users should download Adobe Photoshop Elements from http://www.adobe.com/ instead, because Paint Shop Pro is currently available for Windows only. There is also a version of Photoshop Elements for Windows if you're partial to Adobe products.) Here's how to get Paint Shop Pro:

1.	Start your web browser and go to http://www.corel.com/. You are prompted to select your country of origin. Select it and you will see the main Corel web page.
2.	Click the Free Trials link, followed by the Download button next to the Paint Shop Pro trial version.
3.	Click the Download button once more and the file will transfer to your hard drive. You are asked to Run or Save the file. Choose Save and confirm where you want to put the file on your hard drivebe sure to remember which folder it goes into!
4.	After the download transfer is complete, use Windows Explorer to find the file you downloaded and double-click it to install Paint Shop Pro. By the Way The Paint Shop Pro software you can get online is a fully functional shareware evaluation copy. If you find it useful for working with web page images, you'll want to register the program with Corel for a fee. The evaluation copy of Paint Shop Pro is good for only 30 days, so you'll have to make up your mind at some point about registering the software or finding an alternative.

Almost all the graphics you see in this book were created with Paint Shop Pro, and this chapter uses Paint Shop Pro to illustrate several key web graphics techniques you'll need to know. Of course, there are so many ways to produce images with Paint Shop Pro that I can't even begin to explain them all. Fortunately, the latest version of Paint Shop Pro includes a Learning Center that guides you through common image-editing tasksresizing, auto-correcting brightness and color, and so on.