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Ask HN: Which tools are you using to edit graphics for web?

5 points by mkup ↗ HN
Which tools are you using to prepare small icons and drawings for the web?

For example (me in Windows environment):

1. MS Visio to draw diagrams

2. MS Paint to cut screenshots (from Google Image Search, from Visio print preview etc), make some pixel-level editing in 800% zoom mode and perform 2:1 or 4:1 downsampling

3. Color Detector by Cosmin Smeu to detect color codes on the screen

4. BenVista PhotoZoom to enlarge raster images

5. PhotoShop CS4 to add PNG transparency, rotate colorspace, adjust saturation/contrast, resample raster images

6. OptiPNG (console utility) by Cosmin Truta to compress/optimize PNG files.

11 comments

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bottlerocket
I'm on a Mac, almost always Photoshop but I recently bought Pixelmator. Not sure if I can use it for production work yet but I wanted to support their effort if nothing else.

PNGpong widget to compress PNGs Illustrator for vector stuff

dholowiski
I use Pixelmator all the time on my mac, it's excellent and I rarely find myself wishing for Photoshop.
bdfh42
Paint.NET would be a vast help in place of MS paint. Lots of plug-ins as well.
mkup
I didn't knew about it, thanks. Maybe it will replace slow, ugly and expensive Photoshop for me; because I don't use most of the functions of that bloatware, neither I understand what they are for.
wingspan
I used to use Fireworks all the time, I love the export comparison and slicing.

Recently though I've taken to some free options (I'm on Windows mainly):

1. Inkscape for all vectors

2. Paint.NET for everything else

3. PNGGauntlet for optimization (mashup of PNGOUT, DeflOpt, and OptiPNG).

4. http://instantsprite.com/ for sprites

ohashi
GIMP is nice for those of us without photoshop.

I also like a tool called Pixie for color picking.

graphite
I am using inkscape for vector, pinta/gimp for photos. For very complicated vector graphics, I choose Torapp guilloche designer.
debacle
Paint.NET. It's such a simple program and there are a ton of really good plugins.
xackpot
I have always used GIMP for all the graphics on my website. It has got some good filters that give great effects.
meric
Artboard to draw simple graphics.