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Hey All,

So I have been debating for a while now eventually purchasing PSCS6 which by they way retails for $700. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I was going to spend that much money for something that I intended to use for hobby purposes(FPSC)unless it was a guitar, that would be justified. But for FPSC? Really?

Now I have used Gimp,Paint.net and have Elements10,Gimp on my PC Now.They all have the unique features, but all are basiclly the same. Naturally elements offers more, but when it comes to making texture maps and such once again they are all basiclly the same.

I find myself using gimp more for editing and making huds and elements more for texturing entities. elements does a good job of editing textures, and would be perfectly fine to continue to happily use. But that is where the problem lies, We always want bigger and better, whether we feel constrained by some kind of real or imagined barrier that the "cheaper" version presents. As the Bigger and better version seems like some sort of game design Nirvan. I tell myself between elements and gimp I don't need anythng else. Then that little voice that has no concept of reality whispers, but you'd be so cool if you had CS6.

So the other night I am on the Adobe site, really tempted to enter my CC number. Just before I do, I notice a little line that say suscription. I click on it and find that you can get Creative Suite 6 which includes Photoshop, Lightroom as well as a whole host of other PS software. $19/ month for a year or 30.00/mo month to month. Well I signed up for a year. And could be happier that I did, what CS6 offers is unbelievable. It it way easier to deal with $20/month worth of guilt than it is to deal with $700 worth of guilt over a hobby. So I just eat out one less time a month.

What is the difference?
Well I have read several comparrisons between elements and CS6. And most say that elements is just as good as CS6. Maybe it is. However I have several textures from scratch with CS6 since getting it. And I have to say they seem much sharper,cleaner,more in depth etc than the same texture run through elements. Maybe its just me trying to justify the $20/month, but the textures just seem better over all, they seem to interact with shaders better with CS6 and seem to be easier to design from scratch.

If you want to make your FPSC games more unique, interesting and story consistant. learn to make and texture your own content. It's not all that hard and once you get the hang of it, it's a good distraction from FPSC burn out.

My 2 cents

Well, as a fellow hobbyist I convinced myself that GIMP was fine and was very happy. GIMP had great tutorials and a community for solving problems. My wife is a professional graphic artist and used Adobe Creative Suite CS 5 at work and wanted to expand her side operations at home so for Christmas I saved, postponed buying my own copy of 3D Max, and bought her a full blown copy of CS5.5, it has all of the design programs from Adobe, last year (I think I could have bought a good used car for the price). Now that we have it I have made the switch and must weigh in that in my very humble opinion, what your paying for is 2 things. The user interface and the quality and performance of effects and filters, as well as the support of Adobe a phone call away. I have probably twice the control sliders in the Nvidia normal map filter than I had in GIMP. I even find myself making HUD images and things in Indesign and I use the Flash for other things too. But if it had not been for the wife making me my money back and then some with it, I would have never done it myself as a hobbyist. For a hobbyist GIMP, PAINT.net, etc will do just fine. If you find yourself in a position where $700.00 for one program does not make you cringe, then by all means go nuts. But if you have other bills to pay and you're not planning on taking game programming to the next level, I would stay either with free or under $99 programs.

A subscription is a way to go as well. We use it for the Autodesk Inventor design suites at work and we always have support and the newest version. Just make sure to read all your fine print and make sure it works for you.

I guess you could think of it this way. $700 towards something that will make you more productive. Whether at work or play. Is better than putting it towards something short term like prostitutes and whiskey.

hmmmmm...I've been going about this all wrong.

Or an Aston Martin...






Nah, who am I kidding....

Cheers,
Anayar

I justified a $1200 guitar by convincing myself that it would keep my fingers nimble and thus help prevent arthritis.

Whatever it takes to get the job done.

I use gimp for everything!

Could you provide the link to the page with the subscription Troutflies, sounds interesting.

Personally I find gimp to be perfect for texturing. I find it has certain features which I would rather use than photoshop's. However, photoshop is definitely my preference for, well, photoshopping. Both have their merits and I sometimes will switch between them. Never get stuck in one program. I use wings 3d, 3ds max, and blender interchangeably on one model to do different things. Every program has its features.

@nickyDude,
I noticed it on the check out page.
Click Buy from the link

Here:http://www.adobe.com/products/catalog/software._sl_id-contentfilter_sl_catalog_sl_software_sl_mostpopular.html

Where it says I want to just change the field to suscription.
I just downloaded the Normal filter plugin and the dds plugin works great.

Off Topic but kind of neat: If you install the free direct x development kit from Microsoft, it will install a pretty sweet right click function while on any photo. It allows you to change format size and settings of any picture format to any other picture format. It also does as many as you want at a time. I can change 50 jpeg picture formats to 50 tga picture formats with 2 mouse clicks versus opening them and saving as in Photoshop.