I am so new to graphics and logos and such. so can someone give me the basics!!! like what programs are the best to use! or if you have any links to a place that says!

If you have the money and want to create original, professional logos, i would go for photoshop. If your looking for something cheap where you can throw a logo together in 5 minutes, go for 'The Logo Creator'. http://www.google.com

i use photoshop but it is pretty expensive to purchase, gimp is another program which is just as good and is available for free.

Hi!

I have been getting deeper into graphics for the last several months and know exactly how difficult it can be to get started. (No, I have no affiliation with any company mentioned! BTW)

When I first bought Photoshop, I was overcome with the level of difficulty there was learn it. I had no real mentor to help me through. I tried software that I stumbled on called drawplus x2 from serif. This is great software to get started. I won't claim it can do all the things that photoshop can do, but it is a very good way to get into making nice graphics and how layers are used in an easy to understand format. The other nice thing it has is an image optimizer on export. You can view your image at any compression level before saving it for your web applications. This has saved my sites many k by using graphics that looked just as well in lower sized files. I won't go on and on but the info is here http://www.serif.com/drawplus/drawplusx2/. I got it for $50 by calling and saying that I had an older version.(Which I really did). I have not done any flash with it yet.

Another good one is Inkscape. More advanced than drawplus, but it is free. http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

After I dabbled in these fine programs, I started getting back into trying to learn Photoshop, since it is after all, what most designers use to create beautiful graphics and I spent the dough! I use a tutorial at http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/1
This site will walk you through understanding how to use photoshop in real examples should you decide to splurg on Photoshop.

Another thing I recommend is reading and understanding as much as you can about the differences between .gif, .jpg and .png files. Ther's too much to post here, but it is important to understand when to use each kind of file. Be careful though with png's as older browsers did not support their tranparency issues.

One last mention is to make sure when you export an image you pay attention to its dimensions(pixel width x height) and display it properly in your html! Even just one pixel difference can make text graphics become blurry even though they looked great on your graphics program.

Hope this helped you a bit!

For what to use:

If you want to spend the money: Creative Suite Package (I'm a Graphic Designer and use a majority of these programs constantly...mainly Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign).

I highly recommend Photoshop though, it's what I learned with. Yes at first it's difficult and there's so many things to do but once you get the hang of it you really start getting a grasp on things quickly...and Photoshop is such a great tool for Graphic Design.

Gimp & Coral are also too nice programs too.

I use photoshop, its good but expensive you can get it illegally, but yea thats bad lol

Photoshop and illustrator are the best options for logo design!! Does your head in learning it but once you grasp the basics you can make some sweet websites and logo designs.

But photoshop is not affordable.

when I was a graphics subject I used the corel draw to make design a logo.

XaraX - http://www.xara.com - IMO Beats Adobe Photoshop

If you want to spend some money buy photoshop, if you want something free try Gimp.

I find that I am photoshop challenged, or maybe I just haven't found the right tutorial yet. I have an idea for a logo, in fact I can draw it out just fine, but of course it doesn't look professional hand drawn. Is there a program that is good to just replicate a hand-made line drawing of a couple of shapes, that's too complicated? I don't need anything fancy, just something that I can use to recreate my logo in digital form.

You can get it at free of cost. Just follow the link below:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho..._Photoshop.htm

You can find discounts or at least at one time you could if you are a student. I'm not sure what you would need to verify you are a student but I believe you could get full version of CS for $150 something instead of the usual $600.

Originally Posted by arudis

I use photoshop, its good but expensive you can get it illegally, but yea thats bad lol

Just be careful.

I would say Illustrator is a must for designing logos.

Most clients nowadays will ask for an .ai or .eps file so they know they can use their logos for things such as signs, banners and leaflets.

Take a look here to see why vector is better than raster which is why you should take the time to learn Illustrator

cwaychoff: I've been doing graphics on computers since the mid-late 80's and was doing 'real' cut & paste before that. I had a head injury in 2003 that cause dme to be amnesiac from May '03 to Oct '03. After I 'woke' up in Oct, (I have no memory of those months, but went about my normal routine(s) during the time: I drove, went to MD. Nobody could tell I wasn't there.), it took almost two years to understand all of the effects of the brain injury. What I've figured out is I lost some of my knowledge, have a very bad short-term memory and my personality and personal interests were 'reset'. I was not and am not interested in the same things I have been all of my life. What's weird is I have NO interests. I have had to re-learn some aspects of my graphics knowledge. I also had to re-organize my computer and how I used it. I finally discovered I remember graphic images better than letters or numbers; this precipitated a re-design of my working UI, (user interface). More icons, less words; more structure and organization, less reliance on remembering. In the process of reworking the UI, I found a need for an icon program. I researched them & found Icon Workshop, (IW). It is head and shoulders better than the rest of the applications out there. In a case of pure co-incidence, I found IW about the time I was finding out I needed to re-learn some aspects of graphics. I never would have guessed it, but IW was a big part of my re-learning success. I think it could be instrumental in someone learning graphics for the first time. The program uses all of the terminology & tools used in the graphics world. IW is a full blown graphics creation program; the main difference is the size of the images, & I have used it for working on portions of larger images in chunks as big as 800 X 600. (the limit is 999 x 999) I think working on smaller images might actually be a plus for a beginner. Besides if you master IW, you'll be champ later at making icons, logos and buttons, (even cursors using a sister application.) I'd strongly encourage you to take a look, besides, IW is a lot cheaper than the dollars you'll drop for Photoshop. There are no full-featured, low cost alternatives to Photoshop like Picture Publisher was when I first started in computer graphics. I think Icon Workshop could serve that role today. ------- If you want to do some work in multmedia, check out some British software from AVS. They have every kind of editor, re-recorder, post-production application you can imagine. They are easy to use & ONE in-expensive license gives you lifelong access to everything they make. (you don't see that very often) Also, they have designed the applications that are typically resource and CPU cycle hogs, like video effects, conversion, editing and designed them so they work 'on the fly', eliminating long, system bogging 'compiling' of re-worked video. AVS apps will change how you look at working on video. Good luck, and if you need any questions answered, shot me an e' GeoD

I've been at this a long time, doing spells as a graphics designer, in-house desktop publisher, web-designer, in professional, free-lance and for my own businesses. The industry 'standard' was/has been Pagemaker, (pre-Adobe), Photoshop and Corel for a long time. It still is it's just that Pagemaker was bought by Adobe and screwed up and Corel is just now screwed up. I have always hated Adobe's software design philosophy, programming mind set and customer interaction, since the days of Adobe Type Manager. I've always considered them as a necessary evil to be avoided when neccessary and tolerated when you can't avoid them. I still use the last version of Aldus Pagemaker, (the first version with Adobe's name on it), and instead of two programs, Photoshop & Illustrator, I use one app for photo work and original artwork, the best professional graphics application ever made, Picture Publisher. In fact, I still use the version 7.a, the version that worked great in Windows NT, but had problems with 95. It was actually designed when Windows 3.x & NT 3.51 were the standard OS's. Good programs tend to continue working after OS overhauls. In my opinion, applications are not the true basis of what becomes an industry standard - file formats are. As long as you can produce your work in a format that other can use it, print it and integrate it where needed, it doesn't matter what you use to produce it. Search out applications AND companies YOU prefer and like, then use them. Computer graphics programs should be USEFUL tools that enable your creativity and enhance the final product. They should be stricken from your computer when they become annoying, aggravating or counter-productive. If it continues, then the company designing them should be black-listed, as well. Your creativity will blossum and your work will be fun if you follow this advice. Enjoy, GeoD PS (Any other die hard PicPub users out there? I need to brainstorm a PicPub issue with someone who's used it since the pre-95 days.)

Photoshop is easy but...

If you are wanting to do this as a business and create a logo for a business who will need it for a sign or in a large format. I would suggest Adobe Illustrator to create the design in vector format.
Photoshop is better for editing photos.

as stated in a previous post, it is crucial that you provide the AI. file as many clients may end up unhappy.

Originally Posted by cwaychoff

I am so new to graphics and logos and such. so can someone give me the basics!!! like what programs are the best to use! or if you have any links to a place that says!

Hi, you download all the supporting logos and other images from the websites.
You get all related information using this.