Image Designer?

[ErikModi]

So, I'm working on making subsectors for a campaign I'm playing on Vassal (against myself, to get the rules down again after so long), and I'm running into some obstacles.  I've been using MSPaint to make the actual subsector map, and it works okay, but it bothers me that you can't alter or edit something once you've put it in the picture. . . once it's there, it's there, and all you can do is Undo or scrap the whole thing and start over.  Back in high school, we worked with similar programs that let you click on an alter objects after you'd placed them in an image (change the size of circles/expand them into ovals, move one point of a line to a new location, edit text you'd dropped in, etc).  Any good, simple, free image designer programs out there that let you do that?

[Stormwind]

Oh man well the obvious thing to offer is GIMP which is like a poor man's Photoshop.  Definitely worth a look as it has layers so you can move things "in front of" or "behind" one another.

[ErikModi]

Tried that, didn't seem to do what I want.  I'll give it another look.

EDIT:  Oh, yeah.  GIMP apparently doesn't have tools that'll just let you create simple circles or straight lines.  It's all by hand, which I'm terrible at.

[Xca|iber]

Tried that, didn't seem to do what I want.  I'll give it another look.

EDIT:  Oh, yeah.  GIMP apparently doesn't have tools that'll just let you create simple circles or straight lines.  It's all by hand, which I'm terrible at.

It does have that capability, but it's just not as user-intuitive because the program is so much more complex. I can't say off the top of my head how to do it (since I switched to Photoshop), but a quick google search should be able to explain how to do what you're trying to do.

[Stormwind]

There are several light weight art programs you could use that have a month long free trial. 

Paint Tool Sai and Open Canvas might be worth investigating, but I think that GIMP despite being unintuitive is probably the best solution to the problem.

[ErikModi]

Experimenting a little bit more with Gimp, and it's still leaving me cold.  Not enough gradiation in the thickness of lines, and still can't really manipulate objects once they're drawn (stretch, move around, so on.)  And the text editor window really seems lackluster.

[andydorman]

It sounds like you might prefer some kind of vector graphics solution - maybe something like Inkscape?

https://inkscape.org/en/

[ErikModi]

I'm basically trying to make something like this, but a little less primitive:

[Bozeman]

http://fourstrandshobby.com/2014/08/17/gothic-campaign-week-10-the-cost-of-valor/

I used MS Paint.  Draw a circle and copy and paste it into the places you need, then use the line tool to connect them, then type the letters you need and carefully select and drag them into the circles.  Use the fill tool to color the inside of circles and letters.  Use the pencil tool to "cut off" lines from the circles with a line of pixels if you want to color the circles themselves (so the whole map doesn't change.)

[ErikModi]

Yeah, that's basically what I'm doing, also with Paint, but my main grip is that once something is drawn (or typed), it's there permanently, unless you Undo, Erase, or start over.  Like, if I made a typo on my system names, that's that.

How are you copy/pasting, dragging items around?

[Bozeman]

Don't think that permanence is the end of the world.  You can always use the eraser and then the fill tool to fill in the hole.

Also, check out the rectangle that is made of dotted lines.  Select an area with that and you can move it.  How CTRL+C to copy it and CTRL+V to paste a copied version of it.  You can also flip it horizontally or vertically.  There's also the "lasso" tool that can select an irregularly shaped area by clicking and dragging.

As for typing, yes, you'd have to use the erase tool if you click outside the typing box, but you can always hit undo or erase and fill.  Type stuff like the letters for systems with space between them and then select and drag.  Just mess around with it.

[ErikModi]

Cool, thanks.  The Select tools haven't bee playing nice with me, I'll give them another go sometime.

[Lex]

Try https://docs.google.com/drawings

[ErikModi]

Try https://docs.google.com/drawings

That looks almost exactly right.  Thanks!

EDIT:  Works beautifully.  Only complaint so far is having to move the number I put over the planet to fill it in with a faction color, but that's small potatoes compared to everything else it does better.  Thanks!

[Stormwind]

Oh good call Lex, I forgot about Google Apps, there's Sketchup as well but that's for making 3D shapes.