ART & GRAPHICS PACKAGE

You all know the big names, Adlobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and various "pro" or premium (paid for) apps. But here is a surprise. Many of those who use those heavy hitters use high-quality free apps as well. 95% of you do not, and likely never will, need all of that action, nor COULD you use it. So why pay the big prices and give yourelf the headaches of learning what you will never use 90% of. Or, you may wish to take a few steps into that world and, if you like it, move on up the line. This art studio is for you. When I first got on the web, it was with the Win 98 system and my tech threw in the Microsoft Graphics Editor. Once I figured it out. many of my online club friends saw what I was doing with images and asked me to edit their photos, which I could do with a few keystrokes. Now you can do that and more with free apps that are used by professionals in the field, even in their work for preliminary work that would stand up to general needs, which is where you will be, or even semi-professional use. In fact, GIMP, Inkscape and Krita will serve you BETTER than their Adobe counterparts because both sets of programs are optimized for their respective user bases. Adobe's base lives by the printer, You are primarily online . You live in the RGB color space, Adobe's base is CMYK colr space to accommodate industrial printers. The $60/mo subscription fee is woth it for them several times over since it generates income and supplies tons of support and updates. Actually, for the quality of results, $60.00/mo is downright cheap. However, I did put in some CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black; it is "subtractive", deirved from color film and the standard for industrial printers) material because that is what Splitz uses. And it is EXPANDABLE up to and including CAD as well as calligraphy and LG stationery: And coming in a while; a rebuild of FairyWand; the all=freeware website studio. A starter kit just does not get any better so DO IT ALL!!

NOTICE: This is a heavily upgraded version of the "art" pack and includes new items like:

With respect to Filters Unlimited. I would have put a copy in here, but to my knowledge, it is still a premium app sold at Commerce River. It can be used with IrfanView, a graphics editor. Also the items in "Parts" were made with IrfanView's 'Color Correct". the black and white one of each can be used as a "blank" to make new ones by copying it under a different name and using the color correction feature of IrfanView. For Newbies, filter sets add functions to editors, usually in the form of effects. This seriously enhances editors by leaps and bounds. Editors usually have provisions for adding external filter sets, which can number as many as 30 additional functions to a program. Many filter sets come with editors and instructions to write your own filters so you can really go to town. All provided apps are still free and those that need istallation are installed garbage-free from Ninite. I've been burned a couple of time so I appreciate that

Make no mistake. You still have those great foundational prorams from Version 1 THISMATERIAL WILL GO AWAY IN A FEW WEEKS AS THIS VERSION BECOMES THE NORM

  1. drawing/painting
    1. mspaint; standlone, the XP paint, still useful for quick jobs
    2. krita; on installer, a paint and edit app, used by Age of Asparagus to reporduce one of Bob Ross' paintings (see the link). Some support for CMYK; used in 4-color commercial printing: See the folder with that filename. Also, you may wish to explore the whole KDE Desktop Environment system
    3. GIMP: the famous "poor man's Photoshop' this installs properly
    4. Inksape; installer vector graphics paint program; "the poor man's Illustrator"
  2. editors
    1. IrfanView; installer, highly-rated image viewer and editor. Very complete and easy to use: Color adjsut, image adjust, resize, convert image type: including making icons, join images, paint
    2. FastStone; installer, another hihgly rated free image editor. Dome Scalable Vector Graphics. like Illustrator
    3. Blender; installer. mutifunction 3D rated image viewer and editor
    4. unFREEZe. standalone, create animated gif's (AniGif)
    5. splitz; standalone. image mapper for htiml image maps. This carves up the image then reassembles it with the links you assign to each part
  3. Miscellaneous
    1. Filter Factor; Filters and Filter creation. For use with IrfanView
    2. Spirograph; just what it says: The famous design maker "toy" rendered into an app
  4. Links
    1. RGB color search. Input a color, get the RGB code, also color wheel and chart
    2. Bob Ross with Krita: Age of Asparagus a Bob Ross painting duplicated on Krita
    3. Upgrade your calligraphy horizons.You've got THE WRITE STUFF
    4. Feeling cramped or just want to expand your reach? No worries: You can go FURTHER & get MORE: mORE apps, including CAD. MORE things to do; up to and including a website studio
WHAT TO DO
  1. DOWNLOAD ART PACKAGE
  2. Familiarize yourelf with the contents of this folder then put it where you want it
  3. run the blue Ninite link, art.exe. It will download/install clean copies of Irfanview, Krita, Inkscape, FastSTone and GIMP. You may have to install the IrfanView plugins but that is done by a single click
  4. Go into the folders for each of the created apps and copy the start exe's to the reevant folders: Editors to "darkroom" and drawing/painting to "draw console"
  5. IrfanView will tell you what to do with Filter Factory
  6. You may want to save a copy or copies of this folder and its contents to things like flash drives as a backup. If you wish, you can create a shortcut to this folder and put it on your desktop