Any suggestions for a good photo editor program?

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Hello all, I'm in the process of making a facebook page for Royalty Soapworks and I want to make a banner cover. The look I am going for is to have a banner with a row of all my favorite featured soaps lined up together. I want to achieve this by taking the best photos and cropping them, creating a line up of soap bars forming one picture. I dont know if this is making sense but I have seen people do it on Etsy. I have tried PAINT but there has got to be an easier way. Any suggestions? Thank you in advance soapie buds :)

PS~ I dont have microsoft word available :( and idealy I am looking to upload and crop various pics in one screen with a "grab" tool so I can position them where I want them. Does this even exhist? It has to lol!
 
Yep. For free you can get Gimp. It's the open source version of Photoshop, and it's free I use it all the time. I wish it were slightly easier to use, but it does okay and has a bunch of great filters other programs don't have. It's clunky and takes some getting used to, but it does most jobs pretty well. There's also enough tutorials so you can find help if you need it. I recommend it also because unlike other inexpensive programs like PaintShop Pro and PhotoShop Elements, Gimp will produce .png and .tga images (transparent backgrounds) that will hold up when you publish to the web. PaintShop's have a tendency toward falling out and Photoshop Elements doesn't support the better features people want.

Here's the link. Did I mention it's free? http://www.gimp.org/
 
Have you thought about lining them all up and taking a photo and then cropping it down to the banner size? Backlit natural lighting would be perfect for it. Nothing special.
 
la-rene said:
Have you thought about lining them all up and taking a photo and then cropping it down to the banner size? Backlit natural lighting would be perfect for it. Nothing special.
Click to expand...
You know, I had thought of that but not before I wrapped all my soap! :crazy:
 
melstan775 said:
...unlike other inexpensive programs like PaintShop Pro and PhotoShop Elements, Gimp will produce .png and .tga images (transparent backgrounds) that will hold up when you publish to the web....
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean by PaintShop "falling out", but PaintShop Pro most definitely does save in the png and tga formats. SMF doesn't allow TGA uploads, but here are examples of PNG (the 1 soap image) and JPG (the 2 soap image). The background soap in the 2-soap image was from the tga file.

I will say I have to agree with la-rene -- it's going to be faster and probably look nicer to unwrap one of each soap, set up a shot, and rewrap them than it will be to get a crisp, realistic composite image. --DeeAnna

rsw2PNG.png


rsw3JPG.jpg
 
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DeeAnna said:
Not sure what you mean by PaintShop "falling out", but PaintShop Pro most definitely does save in the png and tga formats. SMF doesn't allow TGA uploads, but here are examples of PNG (the 1 soap image) and JPG (the 2 soap image). The background soap in the 2-soap image was from the tga file.

I will say I have to agree with la-rene -- it's going to be faster and probably look nicer to unwrap one of each soap, set up a shot, and rewrap them than it will be to get a crisp, realistic composite image. --DeeAnna
Click to expand...

I have used all of the major photo editing programs. I think Photoshop is the best and Gimp is an acceptable substitute. I really like the filters and ease of use in PaintShop Pro, but creating transparent TGA backgrounds is one of its major shortcomings. At least it was in version X and X2. In a proper TGA file, you could have drawn the alpha mask to hide/soften the cutout of your soaps in a way that would make them softer and look as if they were one image. Paintshop Pro doesn't have this capacity, or it didn't the last time I used it. If they have added that feature I don't know about it.
 
RoyaltySoapworks said:
PS~ I dont have microsoft word available :( and idealy I am looking to upload and crop various pics in one screen with a "grab" tool so I can position them where I want them. Does this even exhist? It has to lol!
Click to expand...

Placing soaps where you want them will mean working in layers. This is ideal because it isolates every object allowing individual manipulation of each element in your banner. Just take each picture you want, copy them, and in edit, menu, go "paste as new layer." this will lay down your image and you'll be able to move it where you want without disturbing the other image elements.
 
melstan775 said:
I have used all of the major photo editing programs. I think Photoshop is the best and Gimp is an acceptable substitute. I really like the filters and ease of use in PaintShop Pro, but creating transparent TGA backgrounds is one of its major shortcomings. At least it was in version X and X2. In a proper TGA file, you could have drawn the alpha mask to hide/soften the cutout of your soaps in a way that would make them softer and look as if they were one image. Paintshop Pro doesn't have this capacity, or it didn't the last time I used it. If they have added that feature I don't know about it.
Click to expand...
Wow, I wish i knew so much about computer/photo editing stuff. I downloaded Gimp and my face glazed over lmao! I am definately going to give it a shot, it's just gonna take time. thanks for the tips!
 
Maybe I am slow, well...probably...but anyways...have you used facebook before? When I want a banner picture it just asks me to upload a pic from my computer and then when it's placed on the banner you can crop it and move it around. Is that not what you wanted to do? Sorry, like I said....SLOW. :D
 
It's not as hard as it looks RR. You just have to know what the tools do. It does take a learning curve, but what used to take me hours I can do in minutes now. If you need help or would just like someone else to do it for you, I'd be happy to lend a hand. Just message me if you do.
 
melstan775 said:
It's not as hard as it looks RR. You just have to know what the tools do. It does take a learning curve, but what used to take me hours I can do in minutes now. If you need help or would just like someone else to do it for you, I'd be happy to lend a hand. Just message me if you do.
Click to expand...
Thank you, your awesome :)
 
christinak said:
Maybe I am slow, well...probably...but anyways...have you used facebook before? When I want a banner picture it just asks me to upload a pic from my computer and then when it's placed on the banner you can crop it and move it around. Is that not what you wanted to do? Sorry, like I said....SLOW. :D
Click to expand...
I want to actually combine a bunch of pictures of various soaps all lined up. Looking back, I should have just took a picture of them all lined up naked but now all my soap is wrapped! So I want to take the best pics I have of my best specimens and make a line up that way. At that point then, I can upload as you describe :-D
 

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