Lightweight Graphic Editors

April 21, 2005 7:17 PM

What lightweight graphic editors would you recommend?

My wife needs to do some graphic design (a mockup for a website). She has an old, slow, laptop (running Windows ME (yes, I know it sucks)).
What lightweight, not-too-steep-learning-curve (she has no previous experience with this kind of thing) program is out there? I'm thinking Freehand- or Fireworks-lite.
Free is good. Simple is better. Demands-almost-no-system-resources is a deal-breaker.

posted by signal to computers & internet (5 comments total)

GIMP is always there. Its a little bit hard to figure out, but there are plenty of tutorials/howtos for common tasks. If you're afraid of GIMP but like Photoshop, I've heard GIMPShop is a useful tool. I've never tried it myself though.

Other than that, you can try searching Download.com, but there's a lot of crap to sift through there.
posted by devilsbrigade at 9:21 PM on April 21, 2005

Paint.net is a Windows-based, free "Photoshop Lite"
I like it...
posted by stew560 at 9:53 PM on April 21, 2005

A while ago I came across Paint.Net - it's great and it's free.
posted by Sonic_Molson at 9:54 PM on April 21, 2005

Hmm, Paint.net seems to require at least windows 2000, whereas her laptop is running ME. How is GIMP re: system resources?
posted by signal at 11:43 PM on April 21, 2005

Maybe an older version of Paint Shop Pro? I know they made one for even Win 3.1 machines- that's what I had in college. Perhaps you can get the disks for an older version on ebay.
posted by Kellydamnit at 6:50 AM on April 22, 2005