Adobe Photoshop: Which is the Best?

Hi Danny;

I agree with you that Adobe Photoshop is the best, I am a believer in that product. I love it. Happy Holiday!

That really depends on two things, Danny. What will you be using it for most of the time? What is your level of expertise? 

For basic touch ups, photo editing, and having some fun, the CS4 package is plenty. Often more than you really need.

Be warned - Photoshop is PRO level application. It can take a loooong time to learn and become an expert (I've been using PS for years and still consider myself only  an advanced user). 

If you really just need some basic functionality to touch up pictures, remove red eye, crop and resize, there are a lot less complex (not to mention cheaper) alternatives.

Danny - I have CS2 and it's great.  Borino is correct though, there are so many features it could take forever for me to get to all of them.  My favorite is the batch editing of photos.  Saves SO much time!

Danny - While I can appreciate your ten for Photoshop, may I suggest taking a peak at photoscape.org ?

For me, while not an expert by any means, but not a novice either, I found this program to do all things necessary for editing, touch ups, colorizations, balance curves, shadows, stitching, batch editing, and conversion of RAW  > JPG and vice versa.

Best part of the whole thing?  It's FREEEEEEEE

Check it out before you spend a bunch of money.  Let me know what you think.

Danny - I use photoshop Elements, a much easier and cheaper version of photoshop, but it has a lot of ability. I haven't tried banners and icons, will have to see if it can do it. As noted above, photoshop is a very complicated program. Good luck.

If you have to ask the question, Photoshop Elements is the one you want.  Adobe is now up to version 7.

Danny ~ I got the new Photoshop last year (for Christmas as a matter of fact), and while I haven't played with everything, there is quite a bit you can do.  I haven't done a banner or icon, but tonight I put together a slideshow with it for a staging job I did.  It was pretty easy to figure out, but it did take me a little longer than it might the next time because this was the first one I did with it.

"The Gimp" is free and is supposed to do just about everything Photoshop does.  You might look into it first since it's free.

There's no question that photoshop is the best... but it has a large learning curve (and isn't that simple for banners), and is also one of the most expensive out there.

See if you can go to a store, and play a bit with each.