Hi all. Guidance needed for complete newbie

[jimmelon]

I'm posting on behalf of my 12 year old daughter who has already decided her dream job is fashion designer!

She has produced many, many designs on paper, but presumably this isn't really the modern way? I was wondering what software would be best to use to produce fashion designs on the computer...I'm thinking maybe Adobe products are the benchmark/industry standard for this sort of thing? Maybe Photoshop or Illustrator, or others? Maybe cheaper alternatives?

Also, I'd bet that producing designs using a stylus on a graphics tablet would be an easier, much more natural way to get designs on to the screen, what should I be looking for in an entry level tablet - what with software costs as well, I can see I'm into a reasonable outlay for everything that's going to be required. It would be nice to keep costs down as much as possible of course!
What does spending more more on a graphics tablet get you? A larger area to draw on? More dpi?
If you've got a reasonably hi-res display, how does it work with transferring what you draw on the tablet, given that the tablet's physical area is far smaller that the display?

Thank you very much. Any assistance will be much appreciated. :icon_thumbup:

[Paul Murray]

Hello there.

I can't really comment on the fashion design side of your post, though I have friends who did fashion design at university and they all used Illustrator for creating their patterns. As for the actual sketching and designing, I'd assume that a pen and paper sketch could be scanned in and adjusted/coloured using something like Photoshop.

Two open source alternatives to spending hundred of pounds on Adobe products are Inkscape (Illustrator) for vector graphics, and GIMP (Photoshop) for colouring and image adjustments.

Inkscape. Draw Freely.
GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

As for tablets, generally the larger the drawing surface area, the better. This will give you more control over the pen, though this isn't too much of a problem when you take zooming in into account.

I know a lot of people go for Wacom Bamboo's which are quite small (they give you a drawing surface about A6 in size a quarter of an A4 sheet of paper) as they are good value for the price, and they're made by Wacom, who know a thing or too about tablets :P

There are cheaper alternatives of course, but Wacom produce solid tablets, even their cheaper range.

[jimmelon]

That's really helpful of you. Thank you.
(and thank you for such a quick reply).