(Life long) Interest

Playing around with Computer Graphics have been an interest of mine for many, many years. My approach to Design is a lot different than that of a real designer, but what I lack in the "artist department" I'll try to make up with a technical approach and understanding of the process (after all this is probably what you would expect of a software developer <G>). Over the years I've done a lot of photo retouching, and a few years back I got my first dSLR camera.

 

Learning more

I've never received any formal education in using these products, but being an interest of mine means I don't care spending a fair deal of my spare time learning new tricks and coming up to speed with new features and perhaps easier/better ways to solve various problems/tasks. Work wise its not part of my job to work with graphics, but because I got the skills/the interest I've done some photo retouching and other graphical work as well, whenever the need has arisen. There are a lot of great sites on the net that are loaded with tutorials and info of using these products.

 

Software

Software wise I started out years ago with CorelDRAW and PSP (Paint Shop Pro), but then I've moved to Adobe (started out with CS3, and have since upgraded to CS4). Taking a lof of photos I have thought about going for Lightroom, but so far I've setteled with Bridge/CameraRaw and Photoshop. No doubt my strong point is Photoshop, but I do work with Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and InDesign as well (haven't had the time to really work with Flash as of yet).

Adobe got some really nice software, but for an amateur like me, its VERY expensive. So lately I have thought about going Open Source in stead (and at the same time perhaps switch to Linux), so the candidates to replace Photoshop/Illustrator would be: Gimp, MyPaint, InkSkape, Scribus. The "problem" is replacing Bridge/CameraRaw, so far I have not seen any Open Source alternatives that suit my needs: being able to process and "categorize" RAW files. I ONLY shoot photos in RAW, and the photos stays in RAW. So far the only "real" alternative to Bridge/CameraRaw seems to be Bibble Pro which is Payware (but available for Linux as well).