What application do web designers use to create graphics?

Chomeur

I've got a png file that someone has created for me for a website and which I would like to edit. If I double click on the file in Explorer there's an Edit & Create dropdown. This gives me various options - crop and add filters, add 3D effects, and make titles pop, whatever that means. What I want to do is nothing like as complicated as these, I just want to erase bits and add some text of my own, ideally in the same font as the original. What is the best way to approach this, without having to consider whether I want my titles to pop?

mksysb

Chomeur said:

I've got a png file that someone has created for me for a website and which I would like to edit. If I double click on the file in Explorer there's an Edit & Create dropdown. This gives me various options - crop and add filters, add 3D effects, and make titles pop, whatever that means. What I want to do is nothing like as complicated as these, I just want to erase bits and add some text of my own, ideally in the same font as the original. What is the best way to approach this, without having to consider whether I want my titles to pop?

Gimp can do all that - and it's free :-)

https://www.gimp.org/

EchoLocation

A second recommendation for GIMP. It can seem a little complicated at first, but it's really not.

The only thing worth mentioning is that sometimes you need to ensure that your layer has an 'Alpha channel' added to it to allow for transparency, you'll notice this if you go to erase or delete part of the image and you get colour instead of transparency.

Cornucopia

Paint.net?

The only thing is that if you don't have access to the original multi-layered version, you may (or may not) find editing as a flat image somewhat hard work.

Chomeur

My first impressions of gimp are not very good. It doesn't seem to be able to identify the existing text as text so if I want to make any changes I'll have to erase it all and start again. I can't see how to do things which should be simple, like pick colours, and view the file with the invisible colour as invisible (so that I can read the text in front of it). The help file is very clunky and keeps showing me lots of white space. I'll try paint.net.

EchoLocation

Chomeur said:

My first impressions of gimp are not very good. It doesn't seem to be able to identify the existing text as text so if I want to make any changes I'll have to erase it all and start again.

Yes that's expected. You have a png file, which is a 'flat' raster image. The text you see isn't held in the file as text, the whole thing is one single image. If you want to literally edit it in place you would need to get hold of the original image saved in a format that preserves each element. Is it possible for you to upload the image along with what you want to achieve and perhaps I or someone else can assist?

Sandtree

Many "professionals" use Photoshop but its an expensive product. Many freelancers and others who dont want that expense use the already recommended GIMP which is a fairly close second.

What you will use on your website will be a flattened file as these are much smaller so load quicker, whoever created it for you should have a second file where the separate elements and layers are preserved which enables the easy editting but the file is both much larger and much less widely supported. Depending on your arrangement with your graphics person they may or may not be willing to give you the other version of the file. Thankfully GIMP is compatible with the Photoshop file format so you'd be able to open and edit it even if they use the mroe expensive version.

Some do use vector format if they are real graphics people as this gives unlimited scalability without detriment and again Adobe's one of the more popular version with Illustrator... not sure how GIMP deals with vector images.

Tiexen

Chomeur said:

I've got a png file that someone has created for me for a website and which I would like to edit. If I double click on the file in Explorer there's an Edit & Create dropdown. This gives me various options - crop and add filters, add 3D effects, and make titles pop, whatever that means. What I want to do is nothing like as complicated as these, I just want to erase bits and add some text of my own, ideally in the same font as the original. What is the best way to approach this, without having to consider whether I want my titles to pop?

You first need to tell us what you want to do with this file?- web  / print need different levels of quality, and once the type has been flattened its stuck at that quality, its always best to start with the best quality you can as its easy to make a smaller file but you can never get it back one its gone.

Chomeur

Tiexen said:

Chomeur said:

I've got a png file that someone has created for me for a website and which I would like to edit. If I double click on the file in Explorer there's an Edit & Create dropdown. This gives me various options - crop and add filters, add 3D effects, and make titles pop, whatever that means. What I want to do is nothing like as complicated as these, I just want to erase bits and add some text of my own, ideally in the same font as the original. What is the best way to approach this, without having to consider whether I want my titles to pop?

You first need to tell us what you want to do with this file?- web  / print need different levels of quality, and once the type has been flattened its stuck at that quality, its always best to start with the best quality you can as its easy to make a smaller file but you can never get it back one its gone.

I want to edit it and keep using it on the website. I believe now that if the person who created it did it with different layers those layers could be accessible in a file such as a paint.net file. But if I get hold of that I still won't be able to edit the text so I might just as well delete their text and rewrite it all. Paint.net seems closer to Microsoft Paint which I already know so I think I'll use that rather than gimp.

kevinphilips

You have no real options which will keep the original quality while allowing you to edit it.  As has been said the original file will have been created with layers and the .png is a flattened file, any edits performed now will reduce the quality of the final output.