Photoshop

[orangemusicnote101614]

I see all these great pictures on Fanart-central done on Photoshop. So someone, PLEASE, tell me, what IS photoshop? And how do you use it? I think all that I have is something called PhotoStudio 5, which is pretty cheap. I'm guessing that Photoshop is expensive, right...? Heh, it's so expensive to make great artwork!!

[Squidman]

It's a digital editing/painting program put out by Adobe. It is expensive, but there are cheaper versions of it floating around that can more-or-less do what you need. Try Photoshop Elements, I got a free copy of it with the tablet I bought. And it was a cheap tablet too.
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[Trinity_Fire]

Yup, that about covers it. Photoshop can do a helluva lot of things, but some people only use it exclusively to color lineart done by hand... The coloring jobs are nice, but I also often see people abuse quite simple and cheap brushes, like butterfly effects, sprigs of grass, simple gradient colors...
If you ask me, there are really only a few people that really use photoshop well, along with the noobs that try... In the end, I kinda just prefer work by hand. You don't need photoshop for beautiful pics, and I know of several people that can do fine without ever touching photoshop...
Then again, I'm one that can't use the program for crap. It got too complicated. XD

But with a few good tutorials and whatnot, if you really wanted to, you could probably learn how to use photoshop.
...Getting it is another issue I won't go into. I do believe that if you download the program from the cd onto your computer [at least some versions of photoshop] you don't need the cd again, so maybe if someone you know has it, you can borrow the cd from them???
That's how I randomly found photoshop on my computer. 8D

Whatever works for you.

[Squidman]

I give people who use Photoshop poorly the benefit of the doubt, everyone has to start somewhere. People can be bad with digital art just like they can with any other medium. Artists who abuse photoshop filters and the burn and dodge tools are no worse than people who think that using a metallic pencil crayon will make things they draw actually look metallic in my books.

I figure eventually they'll learn. If they grow and get better as an artist... well, a good artist wouldn't butcher their art with photoshop.
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[fallenangel]

Photoshop is the latest toy. Now that it's commonly available to people and found in more schools. Along with those free 3D programs, the Poser trend, the fractals trend, Bryce trend, and so on.

The actual artists making an attempt to improve are finally starting to learn that burn/dodge, the smudge tool abuse, lens flares...are all tacky and useless. They aren't pretty and new anymore. Those that keep using them past the first week of using the program are the same ones that make god awful animated banners with sparkles and borders on stolen art. No design sense. No idea what looks good. The visual wasteland that is myspace...

So aside from the extreme beginners, it's not so bad anymore. Not like it used to be, lens flares as far as the eye could see...

More to the point, hardly anyone needs full photoshop. And it won't do anything for you, your art will only be as good as it already is. Photoshop is expensive because it's extremely powerful....for professional photo editing. What it was designed for. It has tons of features that artists don't need but graphic design and advertising firms do. You can get the same level of results from cheaper versions or cheaper programs.
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[Lizkay]

Photoshop doesn't really make the "work" for you, it's like a medium which wants to be used, but nothing more really, the same with painter, mangastudio, paintshoppro, whatever you come up with. I know a few people who really only create art using these "tools" they sketch, painte and finalize the work all over digital without touching a paper the traditional way anymore, though the bigger bunch still draw the base art on paper, scan it and use photoshop to color or overwork it.

Photoshop is THE popular digital tool, most comon one and it do offers hundreds not to say thousand ways to color/overwork/create art, you can paint, imitate traditional media, cellshade, airbrush.. etc. etc. that's why a lot people use it, it is easier to use a digital airbrush than a real one, and if you have enough of the airbrush thing you simply take another brush and try another method. It do needs a lot of training to get to know where to find all these tools and how to use them right.

You can get educational versions of Photoshop quite cheap and they do offer all the stuff/tools you need.

[CosmicDebris]

I got into using photoshop because real paint is messy. XD But like any medium, you need to learn the basics of drawing and color before you can make use of the tool.
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[Fayore]

...lol. Photoshop hates my computer. Can't draw anything at a large res otherwise my computer goes into Lag Hell. openCanvas is pretty much my favourite out of the four or so that I've tried. :X

I'd say that anything that lets you adjust the brush and supports layers'll pretty much do it for you. I don't use any of the other options, anyway. :\ They're totally unnecessary if you just want to draw. :V