ArtRage: inexpensive and easy software drawing

One of my teacher in graphic design once showed us a very interesting drawing software: Artrage.

It has a very user-friendly interface (Kids can use it!) and it is very inexpensive compared to the other drawing softwares around. (20$US for Artrage 2, 40$US for Artrage 3 and 80$US for Artrage Studio Pro).

If you’d like to try it out, there’s a free demo right here, it will last you 30 days.

I yet have to figure out all the amazing things that can be done with it, but so far I really like it’s fun features.
I even did my inking with Artrage 2 for this poster:

Mama mia! Italian restaurant poster!

I’ve cropped the poster so you could focus on the drawing instead of the other part of the poster that’s been done with Photoshop.

I just got the new Artrage Studio Pro and can’t wait to try it more seriously as they have a new tool especially made for inking.

I found that Artrage 2 is great if you’re planning on doing more sketches or painted-style drawing, but I did have some trouble using it’s inking tools to get a clearer drawing. I was happy to find out that they improved this very important function.

Take note that this is a drawing software and it will be best used for this kind of work.
If you’d like to get a photo editing software (Such as photoshop) to make, say, blog banners. I recommend you use a software more like Gimp, Picasa or even Picnik.

Let me know if you try it out and what you think about it.
Happy drawing!

Open source image editing softwares: Gimp & Picnik

Most illustrators & designers gets the whole Adobe suite for their work. But what if you currently don’t have the money for thoses expensives programs?
Open-sources softares comes to the rescue!

First off, they’re free! You have nothing to loose.

They are usually very effective for fast touch-ups of your images like cropping, resizing & simple lightning changes.

As with most open-source programs, there is usually a helpful online community around it. So if you have some problems with the softare, no worries, there will be nice people to help you.

I’ve recently used Picnik a lot for simple image lighting and resizing for this blog.
It’s fast, easy and the results are quite surprising!
See for yourself with that image change I did for my Matha Stewart Halloween 2009 review:

Original scan on the left & image changed with Picnik on the right.
Quite a difference, eh? (I’m Canadian. :-p)

Then you have Gimp which I know is used by many bloggers and artists out there.
I personnally haven’t tried it, yet. But I’ve heard many praises for it. 

And if you’re from the Montreal area,Studio XX offers a 12-hour Gimp class to get started with.

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Do you know of more open-sources image retouching software? Feel free to share them in the comments!