graphic design programs

Essential programs for graphic design, described and listed in large groups: Painting or retouching, Illustration programs, creation of vector animations.

Once the images we need for our graphic composition (brochure, billboard, poster, card, web page, etc.) have been digitized, a retouching treatment is generally required to configure them according to our presentation needs (resolution, number of colors , dimensions, file weight, etc.) and give them the desired final appearance.

The key to digital image processing are graphic programs, which we can divide into three main categories: photo retouching programs, vector illustration programs, and animation creation programs.

Graphic programs are fundamental tools for the designer, intervening in most graphic creation phases, from scanning a document or directly creating a new graphic to storing the resulting digital image in the most appropriate graphic format. .

They will also allow us to retouch existing images, configure their properties, apply filters and effects, include textual content and even create colorful interactive animations with them.

There are a multitude of graphic applications of all types and prices on the market, although there are some of them that have earned their fame, such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Freehan, Corel Draw, Paint Shop Pro, etc. .

An important factor when deciding on a set of specific graphic programs (usually one for retouching and one for illustration) is to carefully weigh the price/quality ratio, since the most expensive is not always the best, there are programs like Paint Shop Pro which are quite cheap, are very useful and are very easy to learn and use.

Paint or touch-up programs

Painting or retouching programs, also called Paint, normally work with bitmap images, allowing them to change their resolution, resize them, apply filters and special effects and, the most powerful ones, work with layers and masks and the inclusion of texts and vector objects (although once defined they usually convert them to bitmaps).

They are especially suitable for working with photographs and captures by means of a scanner or digital camera, as well as for the direct creation of bitmap images. They also allow, to a greater or lesser degree, optimization of images for the web and export to different bitmap formats.

Among the existing retouching programs on the market we can mention:

Adobe Photoshop:

Number one, both for its wide use and for its technical characteristics, it allows the use of layers, masks, transparencies, contours, special effects, filters, etc. Its main drawback is the price, quite high.

Paint Shop Pro:

A good alternative to the Jasc Software box, offering advanced features, filters and layer management at a much more affordable price. Ideal for quick jobs.

Windows Paint:

It comes installed by default with Windows operating systems, so its main advantage is that it won’t cost us money. It is useful for simple graphics, allowing the inclusion of texts in them.

Picture Publisher:

another good tool for the designer, from Micrografx, with interactive wizards and online tutorials, export and import of files in different graphic formats and various effects and macros.

Corel PhotoPaint:

A good and cheap alternative from Corel, which offers the usual tools for this type of program.

The graphical interface is similar in all of them, and is made up of a rectangular surface, called the canvas, in which you work with the image, an upper menu bar, similar to that of most applications (File menu, Edit menu, Tools menu, etc., and a series of tool palettes, floating or placed to the side.

The main tool palette generally includes:

• A brush with variable shapes, to paint both straight lines and freehand strokes.
  
• Basic shape drawing tools (ellipses, rectangles, polygons, stars, etc.), which are drawn by clicking and dragging the cursor.
  
• Selection tools, including rectangular and circular selections, freehand (lasso) selections, and the famous magic wand, which selects areas of similar colors with a configurable degree of tolerance.
  
• Tools for adding and modifying text.
  
• Color treatment tools, both for selecting the foreground and background colors as well as an eyedropper or “pacifier” that allows selecting the color of an existing area.
  
• The most advanced retouching programs have a set of additional tool palettes, in charge of managing more advanced features. These include layers, channels and masks.

The layers are a kind of transparent sheets on which any type of element can be drawn, in such a way that successive layers can be placed one on top of the other, visualizing the drawn parts of each one of them. It is somewhat similar to the overlay acetate sheets used in classic cartoon production.

The layer control palette shows the existing layers, allows you to change their order, add or remove layers, assign the name you want to each layer, decide if they are visible or not (eye symbol), printable, editable (eye symbol), pencil or brush) or transparent (to a configurable degree).

It should be clear that the layers are an internal way of working of the retouching program, since when exporting the image to a format useful for design, the result is a normal bitmap image, with all its elements located on a single layer. .

The channels separate the different color values ​​of the image. For example, in CMYK mode there are four channels, for the subtractive basic colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Each channel can be modified separately, artificial channels can be created that preserve a part of the image from any color modification, and color can be processed in parts. This procedure is very useful for coloring illustrations of all kinds.

The masks or reservations make a selection of part of the image that means that only this one can be modified while the rest remains protected.

Photoshop for example has a great tool for this, called Quick Mask, which essentially instantly turns your brush or any other tool into a mask applicator. When finished, and go to normal mode, everything that we have selected or painted becomes a selected area. This system allows for special effects and advanced retouching.

Touch-up programs are very useful, although they have a series of limitations arising from their very nature of working with bitmaps. First of all, the resolution of the image is fixed, so it loses quality when you modify it (by changing its size). Any modification that we apply to an area of ​​the image can affect the neighboring pixels.

illustration programs

Drawing or illustration programs have been basically designed for the creation of new images, having specific tools for creating images from scratch.

They work natively with vector objects, generally formed by Bézier curves, although they allow the inclusion of bitmap images, such as photographs and textures. The objects that make up the drawing can be ordered relative to each other, grouped or kept independent.

Among the existing vector drawing programs, the following should be highlighted:

Adobe Illustrator:

One of the programs most used by professional designers, which offers functionalities such as working with layers, brushes, patterns, symbols, various operations with vector objects (ordering, cutting, intersection, extrusion, grouping, combination, etc.) and export to the PDF and SWF (Flash) formats. Furthermore, its graphical interface is similar to that of Photoshop, a program that it complements perfectly. Its main drawback is the same as Photoshop: its high price.

CorelDraw:

A good vector graphics program from Corel, functional and economical, which, in addition to offering the usual functionalities in this type of application, comes with a multitude of ready-to-use clipart (vector drawings).

Macromedia Freehand:

One of the most important alternatives to Illustrator, with the added advantage of working perfectly with Macromedia Flash.

As is the case with retouching applications, the different illustration programs offer the user a set of similar drawing tools, among which the following should be highlighted due to their usefulness:

Selection tools:

They allow you to select one or more vector objects. A variation is the direct selection tools, which allow you to select specific nodes of an object.

Feathers:

In charge of creating new nodes and modifying and eliminating existing ones.

Text Tool:

It allows you to create editable and scalable texts, which can then be converted into strokes, although they then lose their textual quality and become vectors.

Geometric drawing tools:

They allow drawing vector figures of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, circles, ellipses, stars, etc., all of them of a vector nature.

Pencils and brushes:

They draw simple and complex linear strokes, defined by vectors, that imitate even different predefined or user-created motifs.

Color palettes and gradients:

They define the colors used in each object, both in its border and in its fill, also allowing the creation of different types of gradients and gradient meshes. They usually support different color systems (Grayscale, RGB, CMYK, HSB, Pantone, etc.).

Object handling tools:

They allow grouping and ungrouping different drawing objects, merging them, combining them, cutting them, ordering them, aligning them, etc.

Transparency tool:

It offers the possibility of defining the degree of transparency of each drawing object, which can range between a value of 0% (opaque object) and 100% (fully transparent object).

Layers:

Functionality inherited from touch-up applications, layers allow you to define different drawing levels that overlap, similar to stacked transparent papers, in such a way that the user can place objects on each one of them, change their relative position in the stack, show them or hide them, lock them so that they cannot be modified, group them, etc.

The graphics obtained with vector illustration programs can hardly be as realistic as bitmaps (they are too perfect, very geometric), but they can be scaled to any size without losing quality,…