Free ware

I'm wondering if anyone can recomend any good free photo shop style program. Something good for making nice backgrounds and layers. Thanks!

Good luck! I have looked and looked. I think the best "free" stuff I have found is the software that comes with scanners or digital cameras, like Photodeluxe or Arcsoft camera suite. It is nowhere near as powerful as PS though.

Why don't you check out this thread

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94355

Ya, I did mine w/ a combo of Arcsoft and MSPaint.

Thanks for the link Karen. I knew I forgot to do something before I posted this... like search for similar threads.

You can pick up The Gimp for free from here http://www.gimp.org. It's a free program and works on Windows, Linux and Mac. I've had issues learning how to use it, so have just bought the book "Beginning Gimp".

You could do a similar thing, and pick up a Gimp book second hand for cheap, and do a heck of a lot of the same things Photoshop does for a whole lot less.

Originally Posted by jcat

Paint.NETv2.72 was released on August 31st, 2006, and can be downloaded here:
www.getpaint.net. It's freeware, and has many of the tools found in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. There are tutorials right on the site, too.

Click to expand...

I tried it, and as long as you are not already used to photoshop, it is a great starting place. It doesn't have brushes though - so you eventually may want to advance to Photoshop Elements or Paintshop Pro