which is easier to learn?

[kingjohn3]

Which program is easier to learn for doing basic stuff? Paint.net, ms paint, gimp or photoshop cs2? I just want to make a custom background, custom spine and paste retail art onto it. Nothing too fancy. Keep in mind I know nothing about either of them.

[kaysow]

that's debatable but don't use mspaint.

[kingjohn3]

that's debatable but don't use mspaint.

Is it pretty ba

[WolfAlmighty]

Yes, MS Paint is very limited in what it can do.  It also has horrible compression and will sometimes screw up your colours and resolutions if you try to save as JPEG.  It's fine if you only need very basic stuff, but for anything more advanced (even something simple like 'select by colour') you'll want another program.  I use GIMP because it's what I've always used, but the other choices are probably good as well.

[Arseen]

I use Paint.net.
It has lots of free plug-ins that should turn it into Wanna-be Photoshop.

I also use limitedly Windows 7 MS Paint (older ones screw images immeadly, but W7 takes few saves before starts to fuck the images up).

[amarthar]

With the abundance of online tutorials, I'd say that ANY graphics program is easy to learn.

[AxelSteelBMX]

Only use MS Paint if you intend to do any custom sprite tweaking for cover screenshots. That's pretty much all it's good for.

I use GIMP. GIMP is pretty good at making covers. However, keep in mind that GIMP processes certain Photoshop layers differently, making working with most of the Cover Templates a tricky deal. GIMP can't edit the text layers in the PSD files, and you'll have to re-do those. Also, some gradient layers will not show up at all, meaning you'll have to re-build some aspects on your own.

[larryinc64]

For basic editing, Photoshop and Gimp are not very hard, it is mostly learning where things that do stuff are and what they are called. How to use the tools are kinda self explanatory.

Try looking up "Photoshop basics" or something on youtube.