Take your summer vacation memories to the next level with the best in creativity software.

Summertime, and the living is easy. I hope you are enjoying summer as much as I am. I feel as if the bustle of spring and early summer  has quieted down a bit and now we are into those hot and lazy days. It’s prime vacation time. Here is a photo I took while kayaking at the Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge last week. It was nice to get away and be forced to stop and see nature, in the form of a White Faced Ibis, Sandhill Crane, Snowy Egret, Kestrel and a Huge. White. Pelican.

It was beautiful, but I digress.  I am not much of a design software buff, but since I do work at a software company and have access to all sorts of programs, I decided to edit some of my vacation photos into more usable and interesting depictions.

In my first attempt I wanted to remove the photographer’s kayak from the picture so that all you see is yours truly. To teach myself how to do this I used an article from Layers Magazine outlining how to remove elements from a photo. (If I were using CS5 I would have tried out the Content Aware Fill feature Brian wrote about back in May.)

Original Photo

Edited Image

I’m betting the Photoshop experts out there will have some criticism of my editing skills, but for my purposes this will work perfectly.

For my second editing effort I created a “painting” with my photo using Corel Painter. For this I used Kevin’s Corel Painter Tutorial, which I must say was very easy to follow.

Original Photo

Painted Image

It’s amazing how you can preserve your memories in unique ways with computer software. At SoftwareMedia.com we carry such a variety of design and creativity software programs. Curious which programs rank best of the best creativity software? Find out which programs fared the highest in our user tests (user ratings are coupled with popularity to determine the best of the best).

Best of the Best: Creativity Software

Best for User Friendly Photo Editing

Photoshop Elements
Make your photos look extraordinary with Adobe’s pared down version of Photoshop. This is a great way to get your foot into the door editing photos. It is both powerful and simple, and allows you to change a photo’s size (without distortion), fix photos, whiten teeth, adjust color and give your photos a fresh look with artwork templates. MSRP $99.99.

Runners Up: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, Roxio Toast Titanium

Best for Professional Photo and Image Editing

Adobe Photoshop
This one may seem a bit obvious, but when you’re the best, you’re the best. Adobe continues to innovate and be the industry-leading standard in professional image editing software. It is used worldwide by professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, and designers who want to perfect their digital images. MSRP $699.00.

Runners Up: Photoshop Lightroom

Best for Cool Photo Effects

Corel Painter
Make your photos look like they were illustrated with unique brushes, materials, and textures that mirror the look and feel of their traditional counterparts. This program is fun to use and with some basic instruction it is also very intuitive to learn. MSRP $429.00.

Runner Up: Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

Best Scrapbooking Software

My Memories Suite Digital Scrapbook Software
Build beautiful pages from scratch or make a page using one of the templates provided within this affordable software. Print individual pages, create a professionally-printed hardbound book or create a movie which you can view on DVD, iPod, online and more. Download it instantly or have it shipped to you. MSRP $39.97.

Runner Up: Scrapbook Factory Deluxe

Best for Home and Small Business Publishing

Microsoft Publisher
If you are used to the Microsoft Office interface, using Publisher will be a breeze. You can easily create a myriad of publication types, such as brochures, newsletters, postcards, greeting cards and more, without needing any prior graphic design experience. Get started easily with built-in templates and font and color schemes. MSRP $139.99.

Runner Up: Encore Print Shop

Best for Professional Desktop Publishing

Adobe InDesign
With InDesign you can design professional layouts for print and digital publishing. You get precise control over the elements of your design down to the tiniest pixel. Built-in tools help streamline design, preflight and publishing, while included interactivity, animation, video and sound in page layouts help to fully engage readers. MSRP $699.00.

Runner Up: QuarkXPress

Best User Friendly Video Editing

Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Produce spectacular HD movies with powerful tools for video composting, color correction, and surround sound. Edit video in nearly any format including HDV and AVCHD, working simultaneously with standard and high definition in the same project. Customize window layouts, burn DVDs, create slideshows and more – all within an easy to use interface. MSRP $99.95.

Runners Up: Adobe Premiere Elements, Corel VideoStudio, Roxio Creator

Best Professional Video Editing

Adobe Premiere Pro
Offering breakthrough performance for video production, Premiere Pro enables you to work dramatically faster. Eliminate transcoding and rewrapping with tapless workflows. Move from script to screen faster with Adobe Story (offered online), among dozens of other new time saving improvements. MSRP $799.00.

Runner Up: Sony Vegas Pro Production Assistant (plug-in for Vegas)

Best Priced Design Suite

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
This suite has it all, and for less than a third a cost of the cheapest Adobe Creative Suite. You get tools for vector illustration, page layout, photo editing and tracing, web graphics and animation – all in one tightly integrated suite. The programs and easy-to-learn high quality design tools that let you do more than you thought possible. This suite is perfect for professional and aspiring designers alike. MSRP $499.99.

Best Overall Design Suite

Adobe Creative Suite
Once again, Adobe proves to be the best, but not without a price. Of course if price were not a consideration, the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection would be the ultimate suite for a professional designer. But with a suggested retail price of $2,599, you may be wise to choose your edition based on the features you need. (Try our CS5 version comparison). Adobe has provided six different editions to address the creative need of a variety of different disciplines.

Today I decided to go a step further than my last Painter 11 beginner tutorial by attempting to paint a portrait of Angelina Jolie. I used brush techniques found on the Corel Painter 11 tutorial page to quickly and easily create a realistic oil paint rendition of a photograph.

The tutorial video below will walk you through this process, step by step, so you can learn the fundamental techniques involved with portrait painting. This tutorial relies on the clone coloring technique to simplify the painting process. Clone coloring uses a base photograph to gather color information for the canvas. It is a unique process that is inherantly flawed to give your art that realistic, hand-painted look.

Using cloned brushes makes painting much easier, but it still requires time and a skilled hand. All of the brush strokes are your own, and the final portrait will be uniquely yours. This process also teaches new artists the basics of color and visualizing color placement on the canvas. Hopefully after a few cloned portraits you will develop the skills to try painting on your own.

Check out my YouTube tutorial of how to create a great looking portrait of Angelina Jolie in just a few minutes.

Painter v.11.0 (Graphics/Designing - Retail - PC, Mac - English)

Prices start at

$255.99

Avg user rating

0 user reviews

Merchant

Price

Rating

$239.95

12 Reviews

$255.99

409 Reviews

$259.95

202 Reviews

CheckOutSoftware.com

$295.08

62 Reviews

Amazon.com Marketplace

$329.00

12 Reviews

Prices and availability are subject to change by merchant without notice. Please check with merchant for details. For all prices or availability click here

Today I ran through a few basic tutorials with the new Corel Painter 11 software. Painter 11 replaces the extremely popular Painter X, which was released just over 2 years ago. Painter 11 doesn’t make a drastic departure from the Painter X interface, it just adds some cool new features and makes some improvement tweaks. Painter 11 is geared toward artists and more experienced users, but as I found out, even a complete novice can be up and running in no time.

I am no stranger to graphic design software, and I am quite proficient with programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. However, this is my first time using Corel Painter. When I first opened the program, I immediately noticed the similarities it has with Photoshop. The way the tool windows are arranged is very similar, and the layer tool is almost the exact same as Photoshop’s. To get myself familiar with the controls, I watched a few tutorial videos both on Corel’s site and YouTube. These were extremely helpful in showing me the basic tools and where to find individual commands. Once you start messing around in Painter 11, the controls become intuitive and easy to navigate.

After I got my bearings, I decided to follow a few tutorials. A few trial and error sessions later, I was actually able to create some pretty cool pieces of digital art. I was a little intimidated at the start, but now my confidence is high, and I am well on my way to becoming a digital artist. Well, not exactly, but it’s a start.

Check out my YouTube video for a cool tutorial on how to create an oil paint still life from any photograph in just a few minutes. This video will also show you around some of the basic controls in Painter 11. Enjoy!

Painter v.11.0 (Graphics/Designing - Retail - PC, Mac - English)

Prices start at

$255.99

Avg user rating

0 user reviews

Merchant

Price

Rating

$239.95

12 Reviews

$255.99

409 Reviews

$259.95

202 Reviews

CheckOutSoftware.com

$295.08

62 Reviews

Amazon.com Marketplace

$329.00

12 Reviews

Prices and availability are subject to change by merchant without notice. Please check with merchant for details. For all prices or availability click here

CorelDRAW was revolutionary when it was first introduced in 1989. It continues to be one of the most widely used graphic design programs of the day. Whether you use CorelDRAW for graphic design (print ads, brochures, websites) or for everyday tasks (creating diagrams, designs for home projects, etc.), there’s no question why you love it so much. It’s cheaper, faster and more intuitive than many other programs in its category.

For a limited time Corel has released a special Anniversary Edition of Graphics Suite X4 to select resellers nationwide. This special edition includes:

• CorelDRAW X4
• Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4
• Corel PowerTRACE X4
• Wacom Intuos3 A6 wide (4X6) pen tablet X4
• Corel Painter Sketch Pad

You also get 10,000 clipart images, 1,000 photographs from iStockPhoto, 1,000 fonts and 80 professionally designed templates.