My son has an IMac G4 and we were wondering if there is a drawing and image manipulation application typically included with Macs (like Paint on a PC). If not, can anyone recommend a free one?
Thanks for your help!
Carol
http://www.opensword.org/Pixen is free and worth a look. 
Jef
Thank you! The poor kid is home with pneumonia, so he is very happy to have something fun to do (he’s working with it even as I write!). Thanks so much!
Carol
Lawdy, Carol, having had pneumonia a few years ago, I can sympathize with him. Myself, for the first couple of weeks I was too tired to be bored. I hope he mends soon, and don’t let him push himself.
Thanks, Charlie. Sorry to hear you were down with it. He’s just well enough to HIGHLY appreciate missing school for yet another week!
Carol
I use The GIMP for image manip. It’s not so good for straight
drawing, but it’s got many functions similar to Photoshop, which
are handy for making, say, Luthran-Animal hybrids.
Thanks, fearfaoin! I will get my son that program today.
Btw, how do you pronounce your board name? And what does it mean?
Thanks again!
Carol
I am not sure if this plays on Macs but it is great fun
GOOGLE do a free, for home use, drawing program called Sketchup
3D drawing, very easy to use, can be used from kids up through professionals
you can draw your house and add shadows, trees people etc.
the tutorials are very good.
download free here
http://www.sketchup.com/
Hope he feels better soon
Les
When I was trying to learn Scots Gaelic from a book, I tried to figure out
how to say “silly guy”, and register that for my yahoo email address. I
figured no one else would have already registered something so obscure.
I was wrong; it was already registered. But it stuck in my brain, and I
used it later to register here, and at other places. I also sometimes use
the closest Latin analogue I could figure out: virstultus
So, “Fear” is pronounced like “fare”, and means “man” (or “man who”).
Thus, “Fear a’bhata” means “boatman”. Another user here rejoices in the
moniker “feardearg” (pronounced kind of like “fair jerk”) which means “red
man” or “man with red hair” as far as I can tell.
The tricky one is “faoin”, which means something approximating “silly,
foolish”. In Gaelic, “ao” is pronounced somewhere between “oo” and “ee”.
The sound doesn’t seem to exist in English. So “aoi” is a dipthong that…
… well, say “fooey” repeatedly, then try to purse your lips less so that the
“oo” gets said further back in your mouth. Then add an “n” to the end, and
you have “faoin”. It’s bloody hard to explain with text. Maybe I should
record myself saying it so I can post that when folks ask. (But I’m probably
pronouncing it wrong anyway.)
I installed the free version on my older computer (somewhat unstable, but most programs work) it was awesome!
So… I installed it on my new system that I put together last week. It worked fine. After 2 hours I had yahoo messenger crash and I saw a few glitches in the screen. I ran my virus scan and spyware scan and all seemed well. I rebooted the computer and it crashed shortly after the boot… this happened SEVERAL TIMES. I unistalled sketchup, cleaned the registry and will do a few more diagnostics to try to stablize the computer.
The older computer seems to be working fine. Too wierd!
Thanks again, everybody (and Silly Guy for the explanation). My son is enjoying the programs and goodness knows as he starts to get better we are needing more and more things to keep him busy till he can return to school.
Carol
Well, heck. Introduce him to Ray Tracing.
He may never leave his room again!