Image Programs

[Quiver he/him]

I am so inadequate at computing that I can't even title right. Urgh.

Okay, so...lately, I've been thinking it would be fun to make a screen capture comic. But I have absolutely no Deal how.

I was asking around, and some people recommended paint.net and gimp as freeware programs that would be useful, since they have layers and stuff. Frankly, considering my current tool is Microsoft Paint, a more sophisticated tool would be appreciated.

...but I know nothing about computer software. Less than nothing; which is why I'm asking here.

1) Would paint.net or gimp be any use for this? Is there an alternatively guys would recommend?

2) Seriously, are these are legal and free? I'm always wary of accidently downloading something illegally and virus-y...

3) Any suggestions on how to get screenshots? Right now, I've just been taking print screens of the image, then resizing and cropping, but...I don't know if that's the "standard" method or not.

[Eki]

They are legal and free, yes. I don't know about paint.net, but Gimp is open source and everything.

Depending on when you want to screengrab, you might want to consider finding or writing a quick script and binding it to a hotkey. In windows, print screen just puts the image in the copied buffer, so you can paste it into paint or whatever. But if you're taking lots of screengrabs, that's going to get annoying quickly. It would probably be better to have a way to directly save the pictures into a folder, so you can deal with them later. I don't know if gyazo is still around, but that might be worth checking out.

[ZoneZero]

Try Krita. GIMPs interface is horrible still and Krita is pretty awesome.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

20 hours ago, ZoneZero said:

Try Krita. GIMPs interface is horrible still and Krita is pretty awesome.

Yep, that's the one reason I don't use GIMP, I use Krita occasionally and it is indeed pretty awesome.

[Quiver he/him]

22 hours ago, ZoneZero said:

Try Krita. GIMPs interface is horrible still and Krita is pretty awesome.

I... have no idea what Kirta is, and have never heard of it. I'll try looking into information about it!

23 hours ago, Eki said:

They are legal and free, yes. I don't know about paint.net, but Gimp is open source and everything.

Depending on when you want to screengrab, you might want to consider finding or writing a quick script and binding it to a hotkey. In windows, print screen just puts the image in the copied buffer, so you can paste it into paint or whatever. But if you're taking lots of screengrabs, that's going to get annoying quickly. It would probably be better to have a way to directly save the pictures into a folder, so you can deal with them later. I don't know if gyazo is still around, but that might be worth checking out.

Yeah. I think my general computer inadequacies are going to be slowing me down a lot here, since I have...

I know you can screenshot something and save it directly into folders; you've just said it's possible, and my work involves doing ti a lot. But I have no idea how to set that up to work on a default home computer.

[Eki]

1 minute ago, Quiver said:

Yeah. I think my general computer inadequacies are going to be slowing me down a lot here, since I have...

I know you can screenshot something and save it directly into folders; you've just said it's possible, and my work involves doing ti a lot. But I have no idea how to set that up to work on a default home computer.

A quick googling tells me in W8+, you can use win+print screen, and it will save the screenshot directly to a file. But it should be possible to actually do the cropping while taking the screengrab as well...

[mfhscoobydoo he/him]

The question at this point is, how much are you wanting to draw onto the captures, In my personal opinion I think that krita is far more superior than gimp in everything exept photo editing, I know that david revoy nakes a webcomic in Krita called pepper and carrot and it looks pretty nice so ask me and I poimt you to Krita.