HTML, XHTML & CSS

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Part VI: The Part of Tens
✓ Paint Shop Pro Photo X3: This PC-only graphics editor is a good buy
because it does nearly everything that Photoshop does and costs less
than Photoshop Elements. You’ll need to shop around to find the lowest
price, though (Corel charges $80 or $90 for this package).
✓ GIMP: If you’re really on a shoestring budget, check out the free GNU
Image Manipulation Program, better known as GIMP. It’s an open source
package whose functionality rivals that of Photoshop without the expensive
price tag. GIMP supports a user-customizable interface, offers all
kinds of sophisticated image and photo enhancements, and includes
digital retouching, broad device support, and tons of graphics file formats.
It works with Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Sun OpenSolaris, and
the FreeBSD operating systems, too. Check it out at www.gimp.org and
then download it!
Professional Graphics Editors
If you work with photographs or other high-resolution, high-quality images or
artwork, you may need one of these Web graphics tools.
Adobe Photoshop
If it weren’t so darned expensive, we’d grant top honors to Photoshop CS5.
Alas, $699 is too high for many novices’ budgets. Wondering whether to
upgrade from Photoshop Elements? Adobe mentions these capabilities
among its top reasons to upgrade:
✓ Improved file browser: Shows and tells you more about more kinds of
graphics files and gives you more powerful search tools.
✓ Shadow/Highlight correction: Powerful built-in tools add or manipulate
shadows and highlights in images.
✓ More powerful color controls: Color palettes and color-matching tools
with detailed controls that Elements lacks.
✓ Text on a path: Full-blown Photoshop lets you define any kind of path
graphically and then instructs your text to follow that path. This capability
supports fancy layouts that Elements can’t match.
If you need to use sophisticated visual effects, edits, or tweaks on highresolution
photorealistic images, full-blown Photoshop is your best bet. For
basic Web sites, however, Photoshop is overkill — it can do just about anything
to photos or images of all kinds, which of course is why it’s the most
popular professional graphics editing tool.