which package to buy?

[ozchris]

I currently have Photoshop, and an extremely basic level of usage of it.

I'm lusting after a program do ultimately do animations, and to make SVGs. Also it would be great one day to make very simple games. I have used Photoshop to make a simple animated gifs.

I was saving up for Flash, which at this rate will take me a whole year.

I just saw the Xara X1 product. Will that basically do most things that Flash does? It is so much cheaper.

The one thing that bugs me the most about Photoshop is when I use it to draw a shape, using the rectangle or circle, I can then never subsequently fill it with a gradient. Or even a solid fill. It doesn't seem to recognise the boundaries of the circle when I click the paint bucket.

Lusting.

[mushroom]

Why not take the other approch.

and look for a new OS with every thing included.

May I recomend SuSe 9.1 pro for less than $99 US

included is;
the Gimp (is said to be the equal of Photoshop Pro),
Blender (for making games etc)
Vidio & audio editing software
and 100's of other usefull aps.

Make change you will not regret it.

[eightfifteen]

Oz -

Seems like you might be missing a step when you are going to fill something in Photoshop. Can you go through the steps that you take, and see if we can figure it out for you?

[tomhouy]

Macromedia Fireworks is a nice balance between Vector and Raster based editing. The Xara products are ok, but I was never wild about their user interface.

[netman4ttm]

If you have Photoshop you could go with Adobe's premium suite which they will sell you as an upgrade.

Includes Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, GoLive. Under $900.00 US but then you will spend $45.00 for each "Class Room In A Book" so they get you anyway.