Photoshop version recommendation
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I'm planning to purchase photoshop to use for post-production rendering w/ sketchup models. Can someone recommend the minimum photoshop version necessary to do typical architectural type renderings. I don't need photo-realistic results. Also, can someone recommend a freeware software that will accomplish most of what photoshop will do?
Thanks for any advice you can offer. -
Gimp (freeware) would do most of what (not always the latest and fanciest) PhotoShop would do. Even many plugins to PS are also ported to Gimp.
GIMP
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program: The Free and Open Source Image Editor
GIMP (www.gimp.org)
For even simpler tasks I usually use Paint.NET
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I think CS2 Extended is the lowest you can go if you want to make use of 3D features. As mentioned, Gimp is the best freeware.
Retail alternatives are Paint Shop Pro and CorelDraw. Corel is itself fairly expensive (although you could go back several versions here to save money), but it is an entire suite...so you get the equivalent of both Photoshop and Illustrator, plus some other goodies.
The painting bit...Photopaint...does pretty much everything that Photoshop does (including using its filters), while Draw itself is a match for Illustrator...good for presentation layout, other business graphics, as well as useful stuff like converting 2D vector files with bezier curves into segmented curves (a controllable number of segments) ready for import to SU.
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