A chronic pain “Spoonie” with too much time on her hands!
Hi, I’m Jette (short for Juliette). I want to start by saying that I am NOT a professional graphic artist, and I have no official training. I am just a hobbyist whose passion for digital graphics began as a young mother making creative compilations of the children and other members of my family. Projects such as transplanting their faces onto elves and snowmen for holiday greeting cards, or creating heartwarming tributes and memorials for loved ones we lost, has brought joy and comfort to my family for years. This was in the early 90’s, when there was not a computer and internet in nearly every American home like there is today, and I kind of wish I had pursued graphic design as a career. But I chose to be a stay-at-home housewife at first, and then began to have health problems that prevented me from having a career anyway. Now I am divorced and my son is grown, and I find myself bored and stuck at home due to my disabilities, so I turned to my old favorite hobby and started to expand my graphic design skills.
While searching for projects to practice and learn new skills, I discovered the Reddit sub PhotoshopRequest. Here users from around the world who want help with image creation and manipulation can come to ask those of us with graphic/artistic skills to help with their photos and images that need work. If you have ever hired a professional, you know that the rates can be astronomical, and not really feasible for your average person to hire if the project is just for fun or personal use. At PhotoshopRequest, requesters can post their jobs for free or paid, but paid requests are still much lower than a professional would be, ranging from $5-25 for an image, depending on complexity. This was a fantastic way to practice, and I had the chance to earn a bit of money to boot. For someone on a disability budget, this is a pretty big deal! Even if I am only earning $5 for an hour’s worth of work, I am getting paid for something I enjoy and was doing anyway, so I can’t complain.
I have collected a lot of software over the years, especially this past year since I started doing online edit requests. Spending the money on these programs is part of what inspired me to start earning money for my edits. Some of this software is quite expensive! It is also a reason that I think hobbyists like myself are a good alternative for people who want edits done, but can’t afford a professional and don’t want to pay for software or subscriptions to the various online editing tools. A lot of the requests in the PhotoshopRequest subreddit are things that pretty much anyone could do if they had the right software. However, much of the software in question can cost hundreds of dollars, or require a subscription. It is silly for someone to pay for these things if they only have one or two images they want edited. So they can come to the subreddit and pay $5-$25 to have someone do it for them.
Below you will find a collection of the software that I use on a daily basis to complete my projects. It is rare for me to do an edit that only requires one piece of software, because each tool has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Of the programs I have listed, I would say Adobe Photoshop is probably the one with the most comprehensive collection of tools and effects, and the most likely for me to be able to complete an edit without the help of other software.
For years I did all my graphics in a single program, Corel PaintShop Pro (Formerly Jasc Paint Shop). Back in the 90’s, PSP was a pretty comparable competitor for Adobe Photoshop, but over the years it has really fallen behind on technological advancement. Since I have been getting more serious about my graphics, I have invested in some new programs and I am learning new skills and methods for my artwork. First I purchased the newest version of Paintshop Pro, hoping it would be an improvement over my older version, and while I was disappointed with it, I purchased it in a bundle that came with other Software as well, and I ended up really liking some of them!
Corel Painter is a program which blows both Paintshop Pro AND Photoshop out of the water when it comes to creating digital art that looks like real paint and other artistic media. There are thousands of brushes that mimic everything from watercolor and oil paints to pencil and pastel drawings. The texture and depth to the brush strokes still amazes me every time I use it, and I have become slightly addicted, turning people’s photos into paintings even when they didn’t ask for it, LOL! Most people have found it to be a nice surprise that they never thought of, and it makes me happy to bring a pleasant surprise to their day.
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics program, and this one also really got my attention! I have always enjoyed working with the vector tool in PSP, so having a program that took that single tool to the next level with a whole suite of tools capable of providing the crisp, infinitely resizable images provided by vector graphics was very exciting. The mathematical logic behind vector graphics really appeals to the OCD side of my personality, so while I am still a newbie, I am always willing to take on new vector projects.
Frustrated with the limitations of Paintshop Pro, I finally took the plunge in April 2025 and purchased a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, taking advantage of an opportunity to get the subscription at half cost. After 30 years of using the same program, learning a new one has been challenging, but I am quickly learning to appreciate everything that Photoshop has to offer, and it is definitely helping to improve my skills.
I haven’t played around much with the other tools by Adobe yet, with the exception of some experimentation with Illustrator, which is Adobe’s vector graphics program. I am finding it to be much less user friendly than Corel’s Vector program, so I am torn about which one to pursue learning with. But my Corel program is limited because it is only the “standard” version, not the professional, so eventually I will need to focus on Adobe, I think.
Upscayl is a free and open source image upscaler that does an incredible job of enlarging images with less distortion and blurring than most programs. Some users on Reddit have said that it even rivals the high-end Gigapixel by Topaz Labs for certain applications. I’m not ready to splurge on Gigapixel yet, so I will have to take their word for it! For now Upscayl is doing great for me and I highly recommend it.
Last but certainly not least is a design tool that causes a lot of controversy: Artificial Intelligence Image Generators. I understand the arguments against it, but I think it is a fruitless endeavor to try and stop AI because it is here to stay, so the smart choice seems to be to learn how to incorporate it into my work. I only learned about AI image Generators 2 years ago, and I have to be honest, I was instantly hooked. I have always had a passion for art, but never considered myself a true artist. I am more “crafty” than “artistic”. I am great at copying and/or manipulating different styles of art to meet my needs, but when it comes to just creating an image from my own imagination, I have always floundered. So having a tool where I can just describe my vision and have it instantly created at least somewhat close to what I imagined was like magic!
At that time, image generation was still very sketchy, and getting people and animal anatomy right was nearly impossible, so anything you generated would definitely still need a lot of editing to make usable. It has improved a lot in 2 years, but I still don’t think anyone should be submitting purely AI generated art on paid requests without checking it over thoroughly and fixing the inevitable AI issues*. My computer is too old and slow to run a local generator, so I have been putting some of my earnings toward testing out some of the online generators. So far ChatGPT is my favorite, though it is only good for creating new images, not directly editing existing ones. I have not found a good, multipurpose online AI editor for that task yet, so the search continues!
*I will admit that sometimes for FREE requests I will submit a generated image without perfecting it in photoshop, particularly if the requester has stated that the image is “just for fun” or otherwise not a “serious” edit