Software for portrait patterns

[woodrocker]

Hi everyone

I have a few questions on software, Is Carving Technologies Coyote Stencil Shop V3.0 better than GIMP? Does Coyote give you more detail on your patterns? Is coyote worth the 100.00? and does it do more than GIMP? If someone has used both or has info on this subject I would appreciate you comments.

Thanks Keith

[daveo]

hi
I have not got the definitive answer to this as I don't know Coyote, but using the combination of Gimp and Inkscape
is a close to the main stream software such as Coyote, Corel. PSP and the likes of that you can get, the benefit being that they are free, try it if you don't like then pay the money.
Sure someone else will be able to help better
Dave

[EIEIO]

I'd agree with Dave - try the GIMP/Inkscape process before paying $100 for Coyote. There are people here that will answer your questions, and the results seem to be consistent and good. Practice makes the difference - you probably can't just make one perfect portrait. Try each one that gets posted so you can compare your results to what others did.

IMHO a lot of the work is in the initial treatment of the image - recognizing a good photo, eliminating background noise, reorganizing the subjects so faces are recognizable, setting contrast - basically separating the wheat from the chaff. You'll see that in the postings on this site.