What are the differences between CC3 and fractal terrains pro?

[AHawk]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'm going to have to look around, watch, comment and buy something soon!.

[NeonKnight]

And with CC3, yes the learning curve is steep, but it does make really nice maps

[AHawk]

so what I need to concentrate on is one, what is best for me, Two, what has training wheels!, and lastly , three, what is cost effective. So did everyone start off is like PS or CC1 (Back in dinosaur days?) and I just missed the boat. Damn that alarm clock!

[Jaxilon]

Well, I don't know about the rest of them but I started with the Gimp when I signed up here about a year ago....was it that long ago? HOLY COW!

I had never done anything in the digital realm and this is pretty much the only website I dug around in. I think it depends on what you want to do - Gimp is like the Opensource version of Photoshop but they are not exactly the same and when I first used it to follow a tutorial I was terrible. I may have learned faster if I would have forced myself to sit down and go through all the tutorials but I tend to get frustrated with that and go off on my own. It's been a fun journey nonetheless and I am still learning new things but I am becoming a lot happier with being able to take what's in my mind and put it down.

I think CC3 is more of a stamp tool but I could be wrong. I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted and that might mean more than maps so I never really gave it more than a passing glance.
If you have no artistic skills you can still get a lot of nice brushes (stamps) on this website as well as others that will allow you to make maps that are awesome so I don't think you can go really wrong.

If there is a downside to PS or Gimp I think it might be that it is definitely an open sandbox. However, with the great tutorials as well as support of this community I don't think it'll be a problem. It might take you a bit before you are doing cartwheels but if you want it, it will come.

[jtougas]

Well, I don't know about the rest of them but I started with the Gimp when I signed up here about a year ago....was it that long ago? HOLY COW!

I had never done anything in the digital realm and this is pretty much the only website I dug around in. I think it depends on what you want to do - Gimp is like the Opensource version of Photoshop but they are not exactly the same and when I first used it to follow a tutorial I was terrible. I may have learned faster if I would have forced myself to sit down and go through all the tutorials but I tend to get frustrated with that and go off on my own. It's been a fun journey nonetheless and I am still learning new things but I am becoming a lot happier with being able to take what's in my mind and put it down.

I think CC3 is more of a stamp tool but I could be wrong. I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted and that might mean more than maps so I never really gave it more than a passing glance.
If you have no artistic skills you can still get a lot of nice brushes (stamps) on this website as well as others that will allow you to make maps that are awesome so I don't think you can go really wrong.

If there is a downside to PS or Gimp I think it might be that it is definitely an open sandbox. However, with the great tutorials as well as support of this community I don't think it'll be a problem. It might take you a bit before you are doing cartwheels but if you want it, it will come.

Tutorials..? Ahh that's what normall people do.. Darn.. But seriously you can't really go wrong with any of the software that's out there once you decide just what it is you want to accomplish..

[Midgardsormr]

1: Look at maps you like, find out if there are tutorials on how to make them, and use the tools that the tutorial author uses.
2: You'll find tons of resources for Gimp and Photoshop, quite a few for CC3 if you know where to look, and almost nothing for Inkscape. Of all the graphics/mapping software I've used, I actually found Corel PhotoPaint the easiest to get immediate results with, although I got some good images out of CC3, and I now use Photoshop. I found Gimp to clunky for my tastes at the time, and it didn't offer me anything that I couldn't get with PhotoPaint.
3: Everybody has to start sometime, and you can quickly reach a point where relative skill comparisons are negligible. It's just like Chess: just because there are grandmasters playing right now doesn't mean it's too late to take up the game as a novice.