I need advice with software please..

I purchased an Alienware laptop for my grand daughter.
She is and has been very talented with drawing/painting
and has become very interested in computers.
 
The M17x Soft-Touch has Win7 Home Premium 64 bit. ( and 3D)
 
So I'd like to get some art software and not sure what to get.
She's not into photography just drawing and painting. She already
has a drawing tablet (Bamboo)...I haven't tried it with her new setup though.
 
She's been using a Corel program with XP but it seemed pretty limited
and would crash a lot....until it finally wouldn't even work with a re-install.
 
All ears and apprciated any help.
Michael

Thank you Jon. I'll check all you've mentioned.

I have no idea, but I think you must be a cool grandpa. :)

 Alienware is a pretty awesome machine used to be for extreme gaming. I think their new 3D laptops are native 3D so all she should really need to game in 3D or watch 3D movies is the glasses. My friend is really into the art software and swears by Ulead software, but it looks like Coral took them over as well.

Very cool Michael, you may want to check out Stereoscopic player. It is still about the best solution for viewing 3D content on PC. It required a 3rd party DVD encoder for DVDs. Cyberlink's is the best I've found for that, but there is a free encoder at  the steroscopic player site that works OK and a lot of free HD 3D clips as well. Hope she enjoys 3D

http://www.3dtv.at/Products/Player/Index_en.aspx

If you're 3D system and card is nVidia you can get a free scaled down version of the player here

http://www.nvidia.com/obj...deo_player_1.5.5a.html

My friend is really into the art software and swears by Ulead software, but it looks like Coral took them over as well.

+1 Grant.

I still use Ulead PhotoImpact but it never saw an update after X3 when Corel bought them out. Shame.

Hi Michael,

From what you are explaining it seems like Painter is just the ticket.

I also agree with Jonbouy that any skills gained regarding the Adobe suite will serve her well when she enters an art school or the job market.

I learned Photoshop after extensive dark room experience and I use it more liberally now but it is NOT ideal for someone primarily interested in hand drawing and painting.

I really enjoy Painter and sort of suspect that a young person might learn it more quickly than and older person with computer and photo edit experience. Painter has some unique approaches to managing layers and such and a naive person may actually grasp how they work better than someone trying to use their experience with Photoshop and it's clones to understand Painter.

I find Painter a joy to use and I usually open it up when I want to simply enjoy having a creative moment of sketching or painting.

Here's an example of painting I made with painter:



When I work like that I think just like someone sitting at an easel with real paint.



I also wanted to add...

Good for you Michael!!!



best regards,
mike

xactly

Thanks Mike and Russell.
That's very cool Mike. I was looking at  Corel Painter 12..I guess
that's what you were referring too. ?

The Corel Essentials quit working and I can't figure it out so she's
been doing stuff on-line at Sumo Paint. Here is a sample...she likes "Sonic"..
guess character stuff..

I'm thinking Adobe Illustrator CS5....am I thinking right?

Here's one of works.

Draw, Illustrator and Freehand are vector graphics programs specifically meant to produce scalable graphics that can look clean on a business card as well as a 30'x100' bill board or a big movie screen.

They are really meant for people who specifically produce print graphics but are also useful for creating elements used in 2d motion graphic animations.

I doubt that a young person would enjoy Illustrator. People that produce figurative illustrations in vector graphics programs are 2D design ninja graphics experts. The rest of the world uses Illustrator to make sure that the fonts are scalable in printing... and they usually depend on a raster editor to prepare all the figurative illustrations.

Illustrator is not a fun program it is a professional tool that has very specific benefits.

BTW my cousin was on the Illustrator dev team and I have lots of reasons to recommend it... but none really apply to turning a young person on to computer art.

Photoshop is a dark room with lots of bells and whistles. If your core interest doesn't include processing photos then Photoshop may not be your preference. It is primarily designed to edit raster images and so the final output doesn't scale up very well... you have to work at the highest resolution you intend to use because you can only effectively shrink rather than blow up.

Having said that, I use Photoshop like an office worker uses a word processor... to me it is a central feature of all my "graphics" work flow.


Painter on the other hand is a program for the pure expression of drawing and painting. heck in painter you can even use a "brush" that leaves the "paint" so wet that it will drip.

If someone enjoys drawing or painting then they will likely really enjoy Painter.

I don't know Corel Draw very well... perhaps it has incorporated some of Painters tools?

Photoshop has extensive painter style brushes... but it's all just added to the basic photo darkroom set up and so once you have used Painter the drawing tools in Photoshop just don't compare.

I don't really know how to explain it any better.

I got my first license for Painter with my Wacom Tablet... I upgraded a few versions back and don't have the latest because I just use it for fun and enjoyment and find it satisfying as is.

anyways....


Good luck making a decision!


best regards,
mike