Should I learn other Paint programs

[rowen77]

I'm beginning to learn paint.net, but is it useful to start learning about other

programs like Photoshop at this stage?

Anything recommended?

[Red ochre]

It's always good to learn!

The main thing is to experiment and teach yourself - and use the tutorials - and get the concept of layers... and understand how to select things.. and different file formats.

I've got an old bundled version of Photoshop - it's very good for text, & comes with loads of pre-made clip art, you'll, (I will) never use.

I recommend trying whatever free graphics programs you can ( If your confident they're safe - virus scan everything).

Gimp is powerful but complicated and a bit awkward on Windows (all just my opinions).

There is freeware (usually quite old) from Serif and trial versions of the latest Adobe stuff. But it's probably better to understand the way various effects are created, I've learned a lot from the tutorials.- And still learning.

Also there are 'vector' type graphic programs - also worth trying .. but different.

If you've got every program on your computer, you may well get mixed up between them - but I'm quite happy to use one program for one thing and one for another.

I love Paint.net because it's a small program giving me the option to download the plug-ins I want, and lately because I can mess about writing plug-ins, (to greater or less success!).

[Goonfella]

I`ve tried numerous different ones as well as PDN. Some I find I can`t get on with and get rid of (like Blender. If you think Gimp is complicated try this one!) but it`s always interesting to try something new. I have four at the moment - PDN (obviously!) , Gimp, Terragen 2, and Google Sketchup 8. Very often I will use a combination of the various programs to do an image. TG2 is great for landscapes, SU for 3D work and PDN I use to post process the images. Gimp is the least used one but I keep it anyway.