tuesday freebie shoppin'

Happy Tuesday, weblings. We were hit with another round of snow. Delightful! My SUV tried to fishtail twice on slick spots UNDER bridges. It was pretty crazy. Luckily I did not fly off the road.

I should get the novella back from Lady Editor this weekend as long as I’m not trapped in my house by a blizzard. I feel like I’ve been working on that thing forever.

The cover art is nearly complete. I keep placing it aside and coming back to it. That system seems to work for me. I take time to digest any changes I make and then sort of plan where to go next with it. I swear it usually doesn’t take me two months to finish one picture. I’ve been working on other things.

All the drawing time has made me think about changing my software. Right now, I use Fireworks MX, which is an oldie but very goody. I’m not sure that I want to replace it completely, but a change of scenery would be fun.

If I could choose whatever program I wanted, I would probably go with Adboe PhotoShop. That’s the graphic design industry standard from what I’ve read. For the current version, CS5, they are charging about $700. Insane, right? Yeah, I don’t exactly have royalty checks falling out of my butt, so that is not in the budget.

There’s a cheaper version called PhotoShop Elements for $100, but that looks more for photographs. I do stuff with photographs too but I need major drawing tools. Plus, I don’t want to spend $100 either, especially for something I don’t think will work for me.

So I started looking at the freebies.

I used a program called Pixia before I had Fireworks. It wasn’t bad. It's a Japanese program that was cute and reasonably functional. I don’t think there are any recent versions in English.

This one is the runner-up choice so far. GIMP

http://www.gimp.org/

It has brush heads that can do tapered lines, which is good. I don’t think that’s possible with Fireworks. If it is, I haven’t figured out how to do it. One drawback –
I don’t know if it’s compatible with Windows 7. I use Windows XP on ye olde laptop but I might want to upgrade sometime soon. I don’t want to get used to one program and then have to switch again.

GIMP is not to be confused with the Pulp Fiction gimp.




They are not the same thing. I checked.

This one is first choice. Paint.NET

http://www.getpaint.net/

It seems to have some really great features. I will probably give it a go in the next week or two.

Now for something completely different.

I saw this how-to article about how to make people believe you’re immortal. I found it amusing, so I’m sharing. I’m not sure what would possess a person to want to make those around him or her think they’re immortal. Everyone is crazy in their own special way, I suppose.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-People-Think-You%27re-Immortal

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Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find a download of three short stories (free ebook) and links to my novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1