A program to create very professional text graphics. I use photoshop right now and it doesnt look pro. I want something that will allow me to up my standards.
If your gonna recommend blender, are there any good plugins for it out there to make things a better easier? I have just started learning blender.
Thanks,
Tim
[!] :o
Um… I don’t mean to be insulting or anything, but I believe that this may be a case where it’s not the tool, but the person wielding it. Photoshop is perfectly capable of creating professional text work. What version of Photoshop are you using? What exactly are you trying to do with the text? Maybe Illustrator would be a better fit?
Oh… and maybe this post belongs in “Other Software.”
Photoshop is only as good as the size of the canvas you select - if you decide later that you want a larger resolution for printing a bill board photoshop is no good to you.
Adobe Illustrator is the tool that everybody uses. Inkscape is the freeware version and is becoming more respectable.
Blender is a great solution as well because resolution is not fixed when composing your scene. I have used blender for a3 sized adverts and it looks fine. Bledner infact would be my first choice.
Sorry - can’t think of a plugin to make your life easy.
Not entirely true. Last I checked, recent versions of Photoshop (6.0 and up) have had curve-based text tools that scale smoothly unless you rasterize them.
Inkscape is neiter freeware nor affiliated with Illustrator. Yes, it’s open source, yes it’s available for free, and yes it’s a vector drawing program. But to say it’s a freeware version of Illustrator is pretty misleading.
Take a look at RealDraw : http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/
(P.S. There is a special forum “Other Software” for these kind of questions)
I disagree with the whole its only as good as the person weilding it. So your saying you can create text graphics that will be identical to something you would create in blender? Photoshop has a lot of limits. I’m looking for a different feel, more 3d options and a more realistic feel. I mean the stuff i’ve seen come from 3d studio max and blender is what i want. I’ve never seen anything come from photoshop like that. It’s very hard to explain and I don’t understand what I’m even trying to say completely. That’s kind of why I’m asking people who know more than I do. Maybe I will play with Illustrator more, I think what I’m really wanting is more of a 3d feel.
How the hell can you ask a 3D render from a 2D application djeez…
… and even than photoshop will give a small answer:
um… 
Can I just sit aside here… …I thought that quote was funny. :o
When you create Photoshop Text, check the options bar. You should have a dropdown for smooth, crisp, sharp and a couple more settings. Change those to see your text smooth out.
Another thing, Photoshop canvases at 67% zoom always look like crap. Pixel interpolation at that zoom level makes objects look crunchy. zoom to 100% or go to view > actual size and see your text at a good distance.
Photoshop is only as good as the size of the canvas you select - if you decide later that you want a larger resolution for printing a bill board photoshop is no good to you.
I’m sorry, but that is the dumbest thing i’ve heard come to date. You’re refering to raster based images, and yes theres no magic button to suddenly turn it into a bigger size than what it is, apart from interpolation.
But it doesn’t matter if you’re on photoshop or not, any program you make a raster image is in the same situation. You could have a program that costs 20 times more than photoshop, be 20times more advanced… but if you make a raster image for an A4 piece of paper… thats not going to suddenly fit a massive advertisment board.
Your wrongly compairing photoshop to a vector drawing program, and even then photoshop can handle vectors, which therefor turns your theory of not being able to scale-up images to a pile of dust.
the only images that can scale up without quality loss is vectors (or anything that uses a mathmatical formula to form a shape, so how can you make the asumption that photoshop is raster only - and then try comparing two diffferent forms of image creation /data storage together? I actually wonder if you have used photoshop before? it doesn’t have all the bells and whistle like illustrator, because they wouldnt be able to sell you another £500 product to you but you can certainly produce vector shapes, add stokes, fills and gradiants, all illustrator offers you in comparison is the mesh tool, which many pros dont even waste their time using.
I use inkscape over illustrator, ive not used illustrator for long, but when creation and manipulation of vectors in illustrator takes 1 hour on a simple object and 2 minutes on inkscape + photoshop surprisingly i can hardly call it a a top notch program. and again, the only thing illustrator is selling over others is it commerical printing support, i.e. spot colours etc… which would just be an import from photoshop anyway and then theres the mesh tool which can only be used by illustrator, i.e. its no actually part of SVG coding, so you cant make a mesh based vector and use it in something like flash… so not many people even use it because many people use an array of programs and dont want to be stuck in just one.
I disagree with the whole its only as good as the person weilding it. So your saying you can create text graphics that will be identical to something you would create in blender? Photoshop has a lot of limits. I’m looking for a different feel, more 3d options and a more realistic feel. I mean the stuff i’ve seen come from 3d studio max and blender is what i want.
People have been making photo-realistic images in photoshop for years, what do you think?
People have made photo-realistic images or highly graphic images in pixel by pixel image programs like paint. Application may have some form of limits, but most of the time thats only because they dont have some uber “click this button to produce 3d text, or click this button for a perfect glass material”. You have to type the text in then extrude it into a 3D shape, you have to carfully blanace the material to the surrounding to get a perfect glass material.
So in photoshop, you have to spend a couple of minute duplicating the text and moving it one pixel and repearting that stage… merge all but one (the top one) together and change the colour to produce the 3D affect, you then have to add gradiants or what ever to make it look better, maybe airbrush some parts on top.
As you said you dont even know what your after, and i dont think you know how to fully use photoshop. There nothing wrong wanting to use a 3D application to do 3D text instead of photoshop… but it look like what ever were suggesting your going to bump off because you dont have a clue how to actually make the text you want to make.
obviously you can do almost anything you would want to do with text in blender, you said you want to do text like you’ve seen done in blender and 3D SMAX… so clearly you have answered your own question… i think your looking for that magic “make my image now” button.
ok well im an idiot. i understand photoshop but i guess not nearly as well as i should. I mean i could never come up with that photo above. It’s either lack of creativity or lack of knowledge. Where do i find good tutorials on how to come up with stuff like that?
Just experiment, read some tutorials on digital painting is IMO the best way to learn how to do anything, just keep away from photoshop layer-styles and filters, by all means use filters like unsharpmask etc… none of the “uber dooper chrome” or “clouds”
digital painting is pretty hard, but once you’re good at it, you can do anything you can set your mind to. I’ve seen people who do digital paintings and the first stage they do is blocking out the main elements with the corrisponding colour, but the lines /shape are so crisp, that first initial step looks better than most people’s finished digital paintings…
Its a matter of spending time using the program and learning how to do well, anything, and overtime you will be able to.
http://div.dyndns.org/EK/tutorial/ she has some good digital painting tutorials /walkthroughs.