Artweaver

For digitized artistic endeavors everyone wants Photoshop because it gets the best press. But it is also uber expensive.

Now there is a FREE alternative that I've been using exclusively for the photo manipulation that I need to do, and it's an excellent product.

It's called Artweaver and it was released just this year. Formerly a user of both Photoshop and its little brother Paint Shop Pro, I found the transition to Artweaver to be no problem at all. While I have not used it for 'painting' that is what the product was created for, and it seems to have a wide variety of brushes.

A very good review of this product was done at a site dedicated to Photoshop Tutorials, and it touts the advantages of this brand new piece of freeware.

There are also a variety of plug-ins that enhance the basic program, and an informative FAQ.

The Artweaver site has two tutorials posted now, but that list will continue to grow as more people begin to discover the beauty of this product.

While it does not have the higher end tools and color blending capabilities of Photoshop and all its add ons, it certainly is less expensive than its counterpart and is useable by 95% of photoshop users who never delve into the more sophisitcated applications of Photoshop anyway.

I highly recommend it, and use it myself! And it's oh so kind to your Church or personal budget!

Sorry Mac users - at this time it's Windows only.