What do you reccommend for ...

[Bensidhe]

The best programs that you know of for graphics, web site construction, and I think I'm going to open up a can of worms here, the best OS for such stuff.
By the best I don't necessarily mean the most expensive either .

By OS's I mean Win XP and Mac. Linux is still not quite there for graphics, etc, even though the Linux systems are rock solid for stability and memory useage . AMD procs seem to be better at such stuff for use on Win XP, but the NEW Macs seem to be up there for better compatability and than their predecessors. I know there are a number of people here that do this kind of stuff for a living and I won't get any commercial hype, just the straight up goods on what works and what is floss.
Thanks in advance :D

I'm looking at going into this area for a possible career and the people in the know are the ones whose opinions and know how I will be listening to .

[Metal Wolf]

Photoshop is your big boss graphics program with Milkdrop maya and lightwave being the other big 3D graphics progs. For webpage construction notepad is suprisingly powerfull if you know your tags like mad. Otherwise I really love Bluefish for linux for your drag and tag mix, its free too. Though if your going crazy and have cash I hear dreamweaver is pretty good for webpages.

[Raistlin_Majare]

Pictures I'd say Photoshop & Flash.
Websites I'd say Dreamweaver.
3D programs I'd say Maya and 3D Studio Max.

And you don't need to be a milionare to have them. All you need is.. stuff..
But if you aim to make money on said 3d stuff or build websites, then buy the software.

[Angry-Khan]

Pictures I'd say Photoshop & Flash.
Websites I'd say Dreamweaver.
3D programs I'd say Maya and 3D Studio Max.

And you don't need to be a milionare to have them. All you need is.. stuff..
But if you aim to make money on said 3d stuff or build websites, then buy the software.

Dhamon Grimwulf pwns Majere.

[BlueLion70]

Dhamon Grimwulf pwns Majere.

Are you nuts? Raistlin Majere pwns gods. How more badass can you get than that?

Dhamon Grimwulf is pretty cool though, I just read Dawning of a New Age, which he was in, and it was pretty good. I'm out of unread Dragonlance books though, I need some more to read.

[Spinewire]

Pictures I'd say Photoshop & Flash.
Websites I'd say Dreamweaver.
3D programs I'd say Maya and 3D Studio Max.

And you don't need to be a milionare to have them. All you need is.. stuff..
But if you aim to make money on said 3d stuff or build websites, then buy the software.
I concur

Only person i know out of the Dragonlance books is Verminarrd... think it was Dragonlance anyway. It was my old flatmates online name, are the Dragonlance books worth a read?

[Bensidhe]

Thanks guys, and yeah Spine, the Dragonlance books are worth a read. "The Twins" series about Raistlin and his barb bro are one of the best of the series and R.A. Salvatorres Dark Elf series are good reads too . If you need something of that genre with a bit more depth yet, look up an author by the last of of Gemmel. He has a lot of books out and are well worth picking up.

I don't know about going for a full 3D app like Maya, or 3DMaxx. I have a few bucks to pick up CS2, maybe Flash or DreamWeaver . The 3d stuff I don't need to know yet but down the road, who knows.

[RhyssaFireheart]

As was said already, Photoshop really is the industry standard for a reason.

For coding, Dreamweaver is great for learning, but it tends to add in a LOT of extra, unnecessary code as well. I used it when I started out doing my own website and when I decided to convert to using CSS, I spent hours pulling all the extra code out. I resolved to never let a program do all my code for me again. The only thing I really still use DW for is laying out tables, since I hate coding those by hand.

That being said, I recently started using MAX's HTML Beauty++2004 (http://www.htmlbeauty.com/) for my editing. It's like a hopped up version of Notepad/Wordpad, and has highlighted tags for a plus. I'm really liking it a lot and can't imagine why I didn't switch long ago (heard about it well over a year ago).

Flash is pretty much standard as well, just remember that a little goes a long way. A lot of newbies to web design go overboard with putting Flash into their sites. It usually serves no other purpose than to look cool without being functional, and gets annoying after a while. Form follows function.

On Dragonlance - the books were awesome. When I was a teenager. :p

[iza]

For 3D I'd just go with Blender3D (http://blender.org). (It's free, and very powerful).