Mac, XP, Linux -- for graphician

[sisi20]

Hi all,

just switched from Windows XP to Linux. I was all tired from XP, Windows at all, and constant problems while i needed just work on PC and not still running around it. I was planing big (BIG) transition to Mac, but the community around here is poor and investments are really high. My friend installed me Debian Linux and helped me install and make running all bought applications i had. Except for mailing and some IM, i am only working in graphical tools on my computer so I am very happy now (even Photoshop runs nice). Still using Windows time to time (have dualboot), but on Linux i have all i need and i needed not to change my hardware at all (like when i would switch to Mac).
What are your recommendations about PC for (and only for) graphic work?
Sisi

 

[silverpig]

Blender for 3D, GIMP for photos.

 

[sisi20]

Yes, I agree. But i can use the photoshop also, i have it installed so, that i can only doubleclick and the Photoshop starts under my Linux intallation...

 

[drag]

Gimp --bitmap manipulation
Blender3d --3d graphics (buy their book. I was lost without it.)
Inkscape, Sodipop --vector based graphics
Scribus --Desktop layout and publishing.


And their are a few others, but those are ones that are the ones that pop up in my mind right away, and they are free and aviable with Debian's apt-get. (I am using Dedian 'sid'/'unstable')

With Gimp it takes a bit to get used to it. You can do things with the UI like set the toolbar window to be perminately set to be on top. And you can do the same with other dialogs. Also I like to open up all the dialog windows and then send them to the virtual desktop that is one over, that way I can do a quick switch over without having to monkey with shuffling windows.

There is also a guy that hacked up the Gimp UI to make it look more like Photoshop, which is kinda interesting. I suggest just getting used to the gimp ui, but this will rearrange the file menus and such to be more photoshop-like.
http://plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241

With Sodipop vs Inkscape, I've found that sodipop is much faster, but inkscape is much more 'correct' and feature rich.

For instance if you have a wacom pad you can draw free hand easily in sodipop and it's much harder to make clean lines in inkscape. However in inkscape it can do 'clean up' and smooth out lines by reducing the number of points in a line when you hit ctrl-l.

Blender is cool and very nice. One of the nice advantages of it (and gimp) is the ability to do Python scripting (python is a nice easy-to-learn (relatively) programming language) in it, and it's under constant development. The 2.35/2.36 version introduced nice stability and features improvements.

However it's user interface feels like it was developed by a alien hive-mind. It's so weird... It's like 'emacs' or something. But it makes sense after you get used to it.. Their book is usefull.

It's capable of doing animation, nice modeling, and exporting to raytracers such as povray and yafray.

Most of these apps have decent communities and have extensive howtos and tutorials.

There are movie editors, like kino or cinellerra.

That's all free software and such, but not all of them, just the main ones that I know about. All aviable thru apt-get and such, except cinelerra (which is aviable thru third party repositories.)

there are some commercial apps aviable... but I don't mess with those much,

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: sisi20
Yes, I agree. But i can use the photoshop also, i have it installed so, that i can only doubleclick and the Photoshop starts under my Linux intallation...

Which version of Photoshop your using under which version of wine?

 

[sisi20]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: sisi20
Yes, I agree. But i can use the photoshop also, i have it installed so, that i can only doubleclick and the Photoshop starts under my Linux intallation...

Which version of Photoshop your using under which version of wine?

Photoshop version 7, How to see version of Wine? Have to ask, the friend who installed it...

Thank You for exhausting reply above. I am still learning and every information is helpful!