Best “Photoshop” type product for beginner?

[Captain Cactus]

Good morning,
Are you familiar with Photoshop or other similar types of programs?  I’m researching which one would be best for my situation. 

What do I intend to do?  I am going to make screen printed T-shirt’s.  The design will be antique/vintage postcards.  I will use Photoshop (or whatever product I go with) to edit the postcard image to make it work for screen printing template.

So pretty basic stuff I would imagine.  Any recommendations?

[CatamaranSailor]

It really depends on what you need to do and how much time/effort you want to put into learning a new product. There are a lot of free applications that can apply filters and such. Even MS Word lets you do some basic editing of photos. If you are looking for more advanced functionality, there is an open source product called Gimp. Just Google it.

[Trede]

Have a look also at "Paint.NET" (that's the program name, not the website).  It's free as well, powerful, and there are lots of tutorials/help online.  The actual website is getpaint.net.

[Xlar]

It really depends on what you need to do and how much time/effort you want to put into learning a new product. There are a lot of free applications that can apply filters and such. Even MS Word lets you do some basic editing of photos. If you are looking for more advanced functionality, there is an open source product called Gimp. Just Google it.

I second the recommendation for Gimp. I have been very impressed with it as a free Photoshop alternative.

[JoJo]

Canva dot com is fun if you want to put graphics and words over your pictures.  And it's mostly free.  You pay for certain upgrades and if you want to use them to print whatever you created.

[Captain Cactus]

Thanks guys.  I downloaded Gimp and I’m just YouTubing how to accomplish various things.  It’s quite complicated for someone who’s never used an art software before but I imagine I’ll grow more fluent over time.  Thank you!

[BookLoverL]

I also use GIMP a lot. Over time, you will get the hang of doing more complicated things with it. I found that playing around with the different settings to see what they did was helpful, and so is googling things. I actually made my profile pic by starting with a picture of some daffodils I took and playing around with a bunch of different transform tools and filters and the like...

[Accidental Fire]

Gimp is probably the best free & open source replacement for a raster solution.  Inkscape is the best free and open source solution for a vector solution (Adobe Illustrator replacement).  Those two together can do pretty much anything you need.

[YttriumNitrate]

I'd also suggest GIMP, but for simplicity I'd suggest downloading and using an older version like 2.6. Unfortunately, like many other programs, as the versions roll along, GIMP seems to be needlessly adding complexity that steepens the learning curve. For example, in version 2.8 they introduced a "feature" where you can only "save" files in GIMPs native format, but have to "export" them if you want the file to be saved in a common format like BMP or JPG.

[ministashy]

If you want a more pro-level replacement for Photoshop that's still affordable and not as clunky as Gimp, I highly recommend Affinity Photo (for Photoshop users) and Affinity Designer (for Illustrator/vector users).  Both are really full-featured, stable, and very reasonably priced, especially if you want compatibility across formats and the like.  I've been slowly transitioning to them myself for the last year or so, because I refuse to pay Adobe a subscription, and so far they've proven to be worthy successors.

[Turkey Leg]

If you want a more pro-level replacement for Photoshop that's still affordable and not as clunky as Gimp, I highly recommend Affinity Photo (for Photoshop users) and Affinity Designer (for Illustrator/vector users).  Both are really full-featured, stable, and very reasonably priced, especially if you want compatibility across formats and the like.  I've been slowly transitioning to them myself for the last year or so, because I refuse to pay Adobe a subscription, and so far they've proven to be worthy successors.

I’ll second this. I hate GIMP, but love Affinity Photo (and Designer).

[The 585]

I'd also suggest GIMP, but for simplicity I'd suggest downloading and using an older version like 2.6. Unfortunately, like many other programs, as the versions roll along, GIMP seems to be needlessly adding complexity that steepens the learning curve. For example, in version 2.8 they introduced a "feature" where you can only "save" files in GIMPs native format, but have to "export" them if you want the file to be saved in a common format like BMP or JPG.

I like that feature, and I'm pretty sure that's how Adobe Photoshop works right? You "save" the file as a .PSD project file, but then export into whichever format you want (.jpg, .gif., .tif, etc.) and define your resolution/compression.