Photoshop? Illustrator? What?

[Jorath Calar]

His master plan: He wants to make signs for his model-railroad layout, set in the late 1930s-early 40s. Simple graphics, simple text, not a lot of color depth, but fine detail will be at a premium, as the signs will be shrunk about 90%.

Anything doing with signs and logo is better to make in vectors. And as I imagine it is his hobby, I asume he does not want to spend 2300$ on it
Here is one free. http://www.inkscape.org/

[Thoran]

I also use Photoshop CS3... it's an outstanding image editing tool. HOWEVER... I still use Paintshop Pro for quick jobs (loads much faster) - a far less expensive tool that does maybe 80% of what Photoshop can. These days it's owned by Corel - but it's still fairly cheap (less than a hundred bucks I think) and reasonably powerful.

There used to be a free fully function 30 day trial you could download... it's a good way to test things out.

[Ziroc]

Originally Posted by Jorath Calar Anything doing with signs and logo is better to make in vectors. And as I imagine it is his hobby, I asume he does not want to spend 2300$ on it Here is one free. http://www.inkscape.org/

But Vector is much harder for a novice than Raster. All you need to do is make the raster image 300dpi or higher.
It prints out immaculately clear.

[Ziroc]

Originally Posted by Thoran I also use Photoshop CS3... it's an outstanding image editing tool. HOWEVER... I still use Paintshop Pro for quick jobs (loads much faster) - a far less expensive tool that does maybe 80% of what Photoshop can. These days it's owned by Corel - but it's still fairly cheap (less than a hundred bucks I think) and reasonably powerful. There used to be a free fully function 30 day trial you could download... it's a good way to test things out.

Yeah, for me, for easier stuff, I use Adobe Photoshop v5.5. (It loads instantly, and has a simpler layout for quick stuff..

[SixOfSpades]

I'd like to thank everyone for their input, it's much appreciated. My dad actually found a copy of JASC Paintshop at a yard sale yesterday, and at $5 we really can't go far wrong with that. If it turns out not to meet his needs, though, I'm sure we'll try Gimp or see what download.com has to offer. Thanks again!