The Best Tools For Web Design, Graphics Etc?

I think the best tools that you are looking for (and the ones I use) are Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop.... They are industry standard, so if you learn them, you can use those skills just about anyplace on the planet to do design work.

Cheers,

Yeah, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. If you want to recreate the animated Ad banner you would need Flash. You wouldn't need to know any code for one that simple. Just some basic transitional techniques.

I personally use a combination of Photoshop, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. I've tried everything else but to be honest, nothing else really stacks up against that combo. I've tried Gimp, NVU and a bunch of other freebies, but they just don't have the features.

Photoshop for high quality effects on your graphics.

Fireworks for quick and simple jobs.

Dreamweaver for all coding.

You could use Flash to create that animated banner, as Anrkist suggested, but that one is actually a javascript slideshow.

By the way if you want a site that looks just like that one, and you want to save yourself all the trouble, you can just go buy yourself a copy of that Joomla template. It's a template by JoomlArt designed to work with Joomla + Virtuemart. JA Zeolite - JoomlArt Forums
Demo: JoomlArt.com - Joomla/Mambo Professional Templates - Templates Demo

Try some of the free tools of design online.

Web Plus X2 I think I paid $87 for it to Serif. The little dude will do everything I could ever ask of it. I especially like the way it converts everything to html so that files and downloads are smaller. The company's tech support begs you to find problems it can fix. The company also has several great freebee versions that I haven't tried. serif.com

I love to use real draw pro for all of my graphics, super easy to use and makes excellent looking graphics, then I use dreamweaver for all of my programming.

The thing is, it really doesn't matter what programs you use. You just need lots of inspiration. What helps is (say you want to make web templates) googling "_______ Wordpress Templates."

In the place of _________, put in "Free" "Business" "Beautiful" "Artistic" etc.

You can see a lot of different cutting edge designs and get ideas for yourself. Most of the time, there will be some free templates that you can download, too...which plays a major benefit, which I'll outline next.

To get better with graphics, you can go the route of using tutorials and videos...but you can also manipulate images to learn as you go.

And by that I mean...take existing pictures and mess with them inside photoshop. Download a bunch of fonts, mess with filters and layer effects...then try to match the look and feel.

You can also find a lot of free PSD files out there, which may be of greater help. Just google "Free psds."

Then, onto programming - Dreamweaver works great. And you can either use the free wordpress templates and mess around with the php files...or you can get some free web templates. Google "Free css templates."

Good luck!

I just work with Photoshop and Dreamewaver to create a website. This tools is powerfull.

I also use Dreamweaver. If you want more control, find good html and css tutorials so you can understand why dreamweaver does what it does and you have the knowledge to tweak it to your liking.

Yes, the tools you use are indeed good. But adobe photoshop 6 has become obsolete and getting tutorials for them is difficult.

so, go for adobe photoshop cs4. its worth every money spent

I use Adobe's CS3 suite for my designing pleasure. Was going to get CS4, but there's this whole thing about it not working on case-sensitive file systems (um, what?). Good thing there's not really much to the upgrade. Hopefully, this will be a non-issue in CS5 (uh huh).

Like most Web designers, I mainly use the Photoshop/Dreamweaver combo.

I'm on a Mac, so I'll also use Coda when I feel like hand coding CSS for WordPress templates. Coda is an awesome Mac proggy.

I've used InDesign, Illustrator, etc as well. It's been a long time since I was serious with Flash, so I don't use that too much.

At the end of the day, the best tools for anything are going to be those tools that you learn to use best.

Adobe's tools can do a lot, so invest the training time (beyond interface essentials).

I prefer Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 for web designing purpose, it supports almost every sort of file extensions for your webpage e.g. php,html,asp etc. For graphics I refer to use Adobe Photoshop. The version 7 of Adobe Photoshop is much better and easier to handle than the other versions. For flash related work Macromedia Flash 8 can be a better option. That was from my list

Search google for psdtuts for photoshop tutorials, smashingmegazine for inspirations, free vectors, free psd and you'll find a lot of resources that will help you get started

I like sitespinner for fast good looking websites - i believe the tools you use online are based on your own experience and what exactly your trying to accomplish - try a few things out, when you find something that works for you... keep useing it.

There are many good tools, Photoshop, PaintShopPro, Gimp, and Fireworks are all bitmap graphics programs. This means their output is images mapped out in a pixel-by pixel grid, which is directly relevant to images used on the web. Although some of them have vectoring abilities, when rendered as an image the vectors are drawn into a bitmap layer. Learning a vector program such as Illustrator or Freehand is an invaluable tool when designing graphics (Freehand is probably not supported any more, since it's been bought by Adobe.)

photoshop always..

Why not review your goals and ask if you actually need to do design and layout yourself? Why not just outsource that work and concentrate on your core business. To master tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver takes time. Don't waste it.

We use Photoshop and Dreamweaver to design websites and design elements. An open source alternative to Dreamweaver is Nvu, and the open source alternative to Photoshop is GIMP, if money is a factor, which is common for some designers just starting out
www.giveaways.thevideotutoriallady.com

Hi,

A lot of people don't know about this software, but it is awesome, affordable and easy to use. It's called Xara and it can produce graphics just like photoshop, but it is waaay easier to use.

Plus it's under $100. www.xara.com

Dawn.

Another free one that I always go back to is arachnophilia.

The best web design tool in my opinion is Elance. :-) Go there and hire a web designer for whatever you need done. ... Instead of wasting time trying to figure it all out yourself. Time = Money! Sometimes people forget that.

i've done stuff w/ elements... but it's pretty limiting. you really need photoshop full version... not even cs, if you find an older copy you'll be okay - i rocked 6.0 until recently.

I'm a big fan of Pixelmator (graphics) and TextMate (editing) for OS X. Unfortunately they don't come in Windows variants.

Thanks for introducing me to Xara Dawn!