Graphics for Mobile - Mobile Game Design Essentials - page 80

Software to create game graphics
The following software are used for creating the game graphics:
• Photoshop : When dealing with image editing tasks, Photoshop is universally
considered the best available software. It can work with and export to any kind
of image format, it offers the largest selection of tools to edit images and an
endless number of tutorials are available on the Internet to learn anything you
may need to do with it.
All this power, on the other hand, comes at a price. The full Photoshop C6 li-
cense costs $699!
• DeBabelizer : Photoshop is not the only choice, naturally. Other options are
available. One that may be not popular but which is very good, especially
for compressing images, is DeBabelizer ( http://www.equilibrium.com/debabel-
izer/ ) . It is an image editing software with almost the same capabilities of Pho-
toshop, but it creates lighter *.png files.
• GNU Image Manipulation Program ( GIMP ): Another interesting possibility
for those who follow the path of open source software is GIMP. GIMP ( ht-
tp://www.gimp.org ) is a free image manipulation package that offers anything
you may need to produce high quality graphics. It even supports distinctive
image formats of its competitors!
The main advantage of GIMP is that it is completely free, and as any other
well-done open source software, it is supported by a large community of afi-
cionados who provide plugins, hints, and tutorials. The main disadvantage
is that GIMP does not have the ease of use of Photoshop. When you work
with Photoshop, you understand where all the money you spent for its license
went.
• Adobe Flash : This is a multimedia and software platform used for authoring
vector graphics, animations, games, and Rich Internet Applications which can
be viewed, played, and executed in Adobe Flash Player. Flash is frequently
used to add streamed video or audio players, advertisement, and interactive
multimedia content to web pages.