ArtRage

Greetings friends.

Besides creating amazing t-shirt designs, it seems that many of you are huge fans of digital painting.

While most designers favour the Photoshop and Corel platforms, it looks as if there is a new kid (or should I say software) on the block in this competitive arena.
Ambient’s ArtRage is here…and it may just change your opinion on who is top dog.

Ok, so first things first, ArtRage is cheap*….when I say cheap, I mean less than *half the price of your average Adobe product.
However cheaper doesn’t necessarily mean worse…which is rare in any industry.

ArtRage offers an extremely easy-to-use platform, which is structurally solid and very clean looking.
The screen layout is set so that your colour wheel and task bar are positioned in quarter circle palettes in either corner of the screen. This enables the artwork to take ‘center stage’ on your screen. ArtRage also makes it easy to change between layers, select new colours and change the sensitivity of your digital pen.

The word on the street is that ArtRage is also highly easy to learn, which in my opinion, was not the case with Photoshop. I don’t know how many frustrated hours I’ve spent wandering around tutorial sites and help-blogs looking for info on how to solve a problem.

ArtRage is aimed at digital tablet users, making the exercise of digital painting an absolute blast. You have huge freedom and usability with a range of features that you would only expect on a hardcore prog like Photoshop. Currently ArtRage 3 is the latest version, with 2 different level packages: 1 for casual users and 1 for professional design gurus.

Quite a few of you more stringent designers will no doubt notice that ArtRage appears to have mostly functionality with painting and blending layers. If you want an alternative that is FREE and loaded with functionality, which is almost on par with Photoshop, the well known Gimp software is a good choice. As I mentioned Gimp can do just about everything Photoshop can do, except 3D painting I believe.
Please bear in mind that ArtRage 2 (the previous version) has a FREE version for all users.

So, what do you all think? Does ArtRage interest you…do you feel that it’s worth its weight in gold?
Would you prefer to buy an expensive copy of Photoshop?
I’d love to hear some opinions and of course feedback from designers who have used the software before.

Duncs.

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