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Digital 101: Hardware and Software

Hardware:
Obviously you need a computer. I recommend at least a Premium 500 (preferably faster!) with as large a screen as you can afford. I do not recommend doing digital artwork with the mouse as some techniques are almost impossible and it's very bad for your wrist. You should also have at least a small Art Tablet. This is a pressure sensitive tablet that plugs into your computer and allows you to draw with a special pen (or airbrush or mouse). From my experience Wacom makes the best tablets (see wacom.com for details). They provide a range of sizes/prices so you should be able to find one to fit your needs. You might also try Ebay for used tablets.

Software: Adobe Photoshop For digital painting/coloring, photo re-touching and web site design I find Photoshop invaluable tool. For digital painting you need at least Photoshop 7 as that is when they added in the really good brush support that is a must for digital painting. Photoshop has a good interface and once you get started is pretty straight forward to learn. It supports layers (another must!) and paths/vectors (these are a little more complex, but are useful later on). Also comes with Adobe Image Ready - a simple version of Photoshop designed for webpage design.

Software: Corel Painter Originally developed by "Meta Creations" Corel Painter offers tools that no other Paint packages have. Painter specializes in simulating "real media" (chalk, paint etc.) with effects that are not to be matched by any other program (in my experience). I use Painter 7, but I understand the tools and features of Painter 8 are wonderful and the interface is much easier to deal with. For advanced digital painting Painter is a must

Software: Adobe Illustrator I do not use Illustrator at this point, but if you are interested in making bold, solid illustrations this is the tool to use. It features advanced vector support, special 3D effects, font stylizing and more. Illustrator is often used by people working in Web, Advertising and Print for publishing. If, at some point, I start using it, more information will be added here.

Software: Open Canvas Open Canvas is what I like to refer to as the "poor mans" alternative to Photoshop. It has very limited tools, but some nice basic stuff if you just want to do digital coloring and digital painting without a lot of options in your tools. I've tried it out a few times but was never overly impressed, preferring to stick with Photoshop and Painter. It DOES support layers and pen pressure so if you're on a tight budget go download the trial version and see if it meets your needs.

Software: Paint Shop Pro Paint Shop Pro was the first paint/graphics program I really used way back when. In the beginning this was a great tool - a very simple program with some nice features and - best of all - support of almost every graphic file type in existence. Sadly as later versions have been released they have tried to compete more and more with Photoshop by adding in features... and the features have been added in poorly. I hate to say this about a program I used to love, but even though it costs less to start with this will cost you MUCH more in time in a long run. At this point it's better to have Photoshop (which comes with ImageReady) and not mess around with Paint Shop Pro - their text and layer support are poorly designed, and their implementation of Tablet support leaves a lot to be desired.

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