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Graphics Editing
By Jacob Cohen | May 3, 2007
Jeff Atwood made a post today about the importance of a developer having the skills and tools to do basic image and graphics manipulation.
I highly agree, and I cringe every time I see a 2MB attachment on a mailing list because the taker of the screenshot was not aware that even Paint can save as a compressed image format such as PNG or GIF instead of an uncompressed bitmap.
I use Photoshop Elements, which is well worth the price. Why Photoshop, you might ask? Why not Paint Shop Pro, or The GIMP, or any of the other tools out there? The main reason is the community of graphics professionals I interact with all use Photoshop, and it is easier to learn from other people who use the same tool.
It is by watching graphics designers and artists that I learned, for example, that you can move around a zoomed image by dragging the mouse while holding the space bar, and that double-clicking the magnifying class restores 1:1 zoom. It is how I found out how powerful layer groups can be, or that I can press the Alt key to temporarily switch to the eyedropper tool when using a pencil or brush.
Find people who do graphics design and editing professionally, or at least on a regular basis, and learn from them. Adopt the tool they use and it will be much easier to apply the knowledge you pick up from them. If they use Photoshop CS, you can still use Photoshop Elements and translate many of the same techniques over to your own editing.
