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Control edition - Which image editor do you use?


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I'm looking for a simple and effective image editor, preferably open-source, that would allow me to quickly customize more buttons for the UI tools package I made. I can use copy & paste with NI's control customization tool, but I lack a good program to tweak some rough edges. Something that manages PNG transparency as well as the new 2009 icon editor... :yes:

For example, I created this button but noticed that the corners are "system" colored... I would like those corners to be transparent. Perhaps I should do that in LabVIEW?? Any thoughts?

Good:

post-10515-125415732423_thumb.png

Bad:

post-10515-125415729305_thumb.png

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Paint.NET (Windows only) is a simple yet fairly powerful app.

GIMP is the classic example, but has a higher learning curve and a UI which requires getting used to.

I thought GIMP was too complicated when I tried it last year.

But Paint.NET is exactly what I wanted!

thanks

I use Paint Shop Pro (not free), but a lot of people like GIMP (although I found it a little difficult to get used to). I occasionally use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator when I'm doing serious artwork (for print publications for example).

I didn't think about using Illustrator. Humm, I guess I could do other stuff than vectorial drawing with it... :frusty:

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One vote for GIMP (bitmap) and Inkscape (vector).

I've used GIMP to do the VI icons before I found out about Mark Ballas' icon editor.

Inkscape has been useful in making some front panel decorations: keeping them in vector form and exporting bitmap with desired size. I sure wish LabVIEW would support SVG! (Scalable Vector Graphics).

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I will make a strong recommendation for Xara for Vector / SVG graphics.

It is by far the most reasonably priced package for what it delivers.

SUPER easy to use, SUPER powerful and touts to be the fastest vector graphics editor out there.

I would like to hear what others think after checking out the demo download for 30 days.

It's actually how I used to make all my icons.

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  • 5 weeks later...
I'll put in another vote for GIMP. There is a definite learning curve, but GIMP matches more expensive packages like Photoshop and PSP all for the low, low cost of $0.

Anyone know of a good online training resource for GIMP? I don't just want a manual, I'm looking for something that will teach me through exercises.

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One other thing I forgot to mention. I use the Gimp, but I don't install it. Last time I knew the GIMP needed to first have some GTK runtime install first, which took a while to install, then you install GIMP and then it took a long time to start and took alot of resources.

But what I do, is just run the Portable version of GIMP. It's just an EXE with a few folders for user preference, and config settings. So it's free and you can try it out in a manner of a few minutes.

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