Advice Please: Purchase Graphic Software

[Capt Bruce]

I seek your opinions on buying new graphic editing software brought about by my forced upgrade to Windows 7 Home Pro. I've happily used Aldus Pagemaker 6.5 and Photoshop (bundled) and other software but all that software is now useless with Win 7 (along with my color printer's special features and my flatbed scanner). Looks like time to pull out my wallet again.

If I have to get new software I'd like CW/CC user opinions of the best for cleaning up scanned patterns, tweaking designs for 3D imaging, combining or cutting out pattern details, converting raster images to vectors etc. etc.

Your thoughts please as more and more Forum Members will face this upgrade question sooner or later. Thanks in advance.

[dbfletcher]

I seek your opinions on buying new graphic editing software brought about by my forced upgrade to Windows 7 Home Pro. I've happily used Aldus Pagemaker 6.5 and Photoshop (bundled) and other software but all that software is now useless with Win 7 (along with my color printer's special features and my flatbed scanner). Looks like time to pull out my wallet again.

If I have to get new software I'd like CW/CC user opinions of the best for cleaning up scanned patterns, tweaking designs for 3D imaging, combining or cutting out pattern details, converting raster images to vectors etc. etc.

Your thoughts please as more and more Forum Members will face this upgrade question sooner or later. Thanks in advance.

You may want to consider opensource software. There is probably at least one opensorce product for virtually any need you have. Granted there is a learning curve with all of these... and the interface is generally not very simlair to products you currently use... but you cant beat the price... FREE. many have features just as good or better than their commercial counterparts.

Here are a few i use :

GIMP - Photo/raster image editing
Inkscape - Vector image editor
Blender - 3d rendering package
Scribus - Desktop Publishing
OpenOffice - Offce Productivity suite

Doug Fletcher

[CarverJerry]

Capt Bruce, I just did the same thing and am stuck with windows 7. My HP printer software didn't work with Win 7 but there was an upgrade for it on the HP web site. Ya might want to check and see if your printer has an upgrade/update for Win 7 before you open your wallet.
I about to see if my adobe photoshop elements will work, will let you know...

[AskBud]

Adobe Photoshop Elements-8 is W7 compatible.
AskBud

[mtylerfl]

I seek your opinions on buying new graphic editing software brought about by my forced upgrade to Windows 7 Home Pro. I've happily used Aldus Pagemaker 6.5 and Photoshop (bundled) and other software but all that software is now useless with Win 7 (along with my color printer's special features and my flatbed scanner). Looks like time to pull out my wallet again.

If I have to get new software I'd like CW/CC user opinions of the best for cleaning up scanned patterns, tweaking designs for 3D imaging, combining or cutting out pattern details, converting raster images to vectors etc. etc.

Your thoughts please as more and more Forum Members will face this upgrade question sooner or later. Thanks in advance.

Hello,

I still run Win XP Pro (skipped Vista due to driver incompatibilities with my recording studio MIDI/Audio equipment). However, I have heard that Win 7 has a very good XP-Compatibility mode.

I also have my original PageMaker 6.5 and it runs fine on XP. Have you tried running it (and other older software) in the XP-Compatibility mode on your Win 7 system? I am very interested in the outcome, as I have several software programs that are "legacy" and would hate to lose them (some of the companies that made these are defunct - no hope of updates for current operating systems).

I have even thought I should build my next system with several hard drives with different operating systems on each, just to make sure I can run the 'old' and the 'new'! Thinking two drives with Win XP Pro 32 and Win XP Pro 64 and two more with Win 7 32 and Win 7 64. Not sure about licensing each operating system - wondering if I have to pay Microsoft for 4 licenses or just two (XP and 7 in both the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors).

Please let me (us) know if the Win 7 XP-compatibility mode allows you to run some of your older software.

[dbfletcher]

I might be mistaken, but I thought XP mode was only being offered with Windows 7 Pro, ulitimate, or enterprise.

Doug Fletcher

[eelamb]

Doug is right XP mode is only offered in pro, ultimate, and enterprise.

MT yes you would need 4 license unless you get the volumn license for each one. Not sure why the XP 64B version, not much available for that version.
What you need is one of each, XP or vista 32b, and win7 64b. This will cover most anything you need.

As to the win7 op system, if you have a 32b pc, then most hardware drivers will operate on it. On 64b systems you have to have new drivers. 32b drivers will not work on a 64b system. To operate your printers, computer hardware (if you upgraded), and scanners, on win7 64b you wil need to download new drivers. No DOS software will operate on win7 64b systems.

Bimp is the free photoshop.
openoffice is the free MS office
Make sure you download from a safe place like http://download.cnet.com

[eelamb]

Forgot to mention the anytime upgrade offer for less than $80. It is a upgrade from win7 home to win7 pro. All they send you is the code you enter and your home package becomes a pro version.

[twiceretired]

When I upgraded to windows 7, I added another hard drive and now dual boot with vista on my original drive and windows 7 on the new drive, works great. This can be done on one drive as well by making a portion and then loading the windows 7 on the new portion. On startup it will ask you which windows you want to run. Dual boot should work with most combinations of windows.
Also on windows 7 don’t bother with IE 64 bit, most of the plug-ins haven’t been updated. Windows 7 should load IE 32 bit, and most will not notice.
Also with windows 7, log in as administrator to avoid problems in running some programs.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/
Good Luck

[eelamb]

Microsoft is releasing a new XP mode for win7 pro. See their comments below:

Effective immediately, Windows XP Mode no longer requires hardware virtualization technology, Microsoft officials said today. XP Mode is a feature of Windows 7 Professional or higher that allows companies to run XP applications that are incompatible with Windows 7 in a virtual environment.

Until today, XP Mode would only work on PCs that included CPUs that supported chip-level virtualization. Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft General Manager of Windows Commercial Product Management admitted during a phone interview this week that users were confused as to which PCs offered this technology. Some PCs that claimed to didn’t support XP Mode. To enable more users to take advantage of XP Mode, Microsoft found a way to eliminate the need to have virtualization turned on at the BIOS level. The company is releasing an updated version of XP Mode today to users and OEMs for download