Motivation: Even at a street price of $570US - Photoshop is a major investment
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS

Adobe Photoshop is the number one 2D paint program - see our recent review. But its street price of $570US is at least 40% higher than some of its near rivals and ranges as high as 4 times greater than some of its real competitors. And despite the generally high quality rating we gave Photshop there are other 2D Paint tools that beat Photoshop in specific areas. For example, Corel Painter IX (again see our review) has superior features in natural media reproducing a wider range of natural painting looks and has a wider range of brushes plus natural materials to offer creative artists. And Corel PaintShop Pro bests Photoshop in ease of use and some specific areas such as number of effects and ability to preview, save and restore them with ease. At the same time, against stalwart Photoshop strengths such as vector paths, color corrections, and layering - Paint Shop Pro surprises again with unique features and 75-90% of the same features on the whole as Photoshop. And therefore at a street price of $120US, Paint Shop Pro 9 is a real bargain especially for digital photographers new to photo editing.

Finally, Xara Xtreme Pro is without a doubt the software you should be using when doing extremely large file manipulations - in the 20 to 100MB range. These are not uncommon with the new 14-24MPixel top end digital cameras. Ditto for the complex layered Photoshop and Illustrator files of more modest dimensions but 100s of adjustment layers. The intriguing factor is that Xara is at least 4 to 6 times faster than Photoshop CS3 when manipulating these huge file images. And like PaintShop Pro it is easier to use.

So endure Photoshop CS3 for editing things like Panoramas, HDR files, architectural perspectives or using Photoshop's etensive Filter Gallery and other special effects. Then do the balance of your photo composition work in Xara. Xara reads all but some of the more advanced Smart Objects and Adjustment layers in Photoshop. It also exports back out in PSD file format as required for printing or other purposes.

Now Adobe is aware of the problem of handling very large files and is planning to do somethings about it. But I suspect this will take two or three iterations and mucho memory before Photoshop gets close to Xara's performance.

So the question becomes - When should someone invest in Photoshop?

It depends on what you want to use the program for. If it is to impress your colleagues and have close to the ultimate in photo paint programs - then go ahead, splurge. Only in the area of natural media look and feel will Photoshop let you down - and not a real lot as Corel Painter IX interfaces quite closely with Photoshop and there are some third party natural paint plugins like Right Hemisphere that shore up Photoshop's brushes and natural media capabilities. But if you are a creative artist who starts from scratch and values a natural look and feel then you will have to consider Corel Painter IX or Right Hemisphere Deep Paint because of the cost savings as well as range of features both offer in natural media rendering.

If you work extensively in animation or cartooning, again you may want to consider alternatives. True, Photoshop through Image Ready has the capability to do basic animation work. But even that combo is no match for the animation prowess of Toon Boom Studio, Macromedia Flash or Swishzone's SwishMax just to mention 3 of many very good products in this realm. These tools have a full range of animation sophistication - frames, tweening, plus audio and video integration. If on the other hand, you are just responsible for creating the complex graphic renderings - the keyframes for an animation sequence then Photoshop may be a good choice as it is able to capture easily video, animation as well as photo images as a point of departure.

In the 3D world, Photoshop is used a surprising amount of the time to apply the texture, "skins", and finishing face to a lot of 3D models. But there a number of other programs that can do these rendering tasks and include the capability to map from 2D flat to 3D curved surfaces and back again to "see" or project the results as the artist works on a model. Again Photoshop has some very fairly expensive plugins (see our Plugins links for some hints) that help fill the gap and many of the major modeling programs like 3Dmax and Lightwave go out of their way to support Photoshop files often with complete layering intact. 3D is a complicated world so artists will have to make their decisions based on a number of specific requirements.

The last professional "artist" group we will consider are Web developers and technical illustrators. Yes, these are the pros who have other concerns beyond the artistry, design styling finish of the sites and/or equipment/devices they are creating.Dont be fooled. They are vitally concerned about the the artistry and graphics they work with - but the nature of their work pulls them in different directions. Take web developers - their images most often are 72DPI and 800x600 pixels or less in size. Their number one concern after eye-catching is the download time of the file. Both Image Ready and Photoshop provide plenty of features to optimize those download file sizes. But so do Photo Paint in Corel Draw Suite 12 or Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 or Ulead's Photo Impact Pro 8.5 and at a fraction of the price of Photoshop.

As for technical illustrators they are often working with business illustration tools like Adobe 's own Illustrator, Microsoft Visio or Deneba Canvas 9 which have a huge sets of specialized features and stencil images. In effect illustrators are pretty tightly tied to their software for rapidly producing their business flowcharts charts and drawings. These business drawings may be transferred over to Photoshop for intermediate or final graphics finishing. So like in the other areas - Photoshop may be a support program; but given that the.jpg, .tiff and .gif output available from the business programs will work with any program, some of the cheaper options above may be just as effective.

Image Creation and Photo Finishing

For photo finishing, Photoshop is one of the premier tools. If you need to be able to provide clients with many solutions that can reproduce colors with absolute fidelity Photoshop is your first choice. This becomes even more important if delivery to many different clients and output media are required because Photoshop is supported as a standard by the broadest range of hardware and other graphics software. Also consider that Photoshop has the widest base of 3rd party support and educational backup - more books and courses are available on Photoshop than all the other paint tools combined.

For original image creation, Photoshop is still strong but not always the best solution . Software like Corel Painter IX and Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint provide special creative features and functions that Photoshop is hard pressed to duplicate. However, because of the balance between the masking , layering and brushes with Photoshop's vector drawing tools, artists still have a very wide range of expression available in Photoshop. So in this case use the trial edition of the software or invest in Photoshop Elements which costs 1/5 the price but has 75-85% of Photoshop functionality. See if you are comfortable with the way Photoshop works and is laid out. Try Painter IX or Toon Boom or Xara - almost all software comes with a full version, time limited (now down to 30 days in most cases). Use the trial software to see which package you are most comfortable and creative with - and then invest with your personal best. the download and isntall time will be less than 15

As for amateurs, digital camera users, and relative neophytes - don't feel pressed to go to the top end. Remember Adobe has Photoshop Elements which has the same layout and most of the same commands as full Photoshop but costs a fraction of Photoshop. It provides good training wheels for later moving up to full Photoshop.

But the same savings and functionality can be found with tools like Corel PhotoPaint, Jasc/Corel Paint Shop Pro and Ulead's Photo Impact. All of these programs deliver 70-80% of Photoshop functionality not only at 1/5 the price - but even more important, with the added advantage of being easier to learn. Photoshop's menus and commands present a very large learning curve. True, to alleviate this learning drawback Photoshop has improved its help system and printed documentation -but so have the competitors. This is especially true of Corel Paint Shop Pro and Corel Painter IX. And these programs are easier to use because they have done the hard work of standardizing/simplifying their dialogs and interfaces - a task that Photoshop is in the middle of doing now.

So as a rule of thumb for graphic neophytes, if you are paying more than $150US for your Paint software - more than likely you are paying too much. Or at least make sure you are getting some special feature which you will immediately take advantage of to justify the extra cost. But the bottom line is all the graphic tools we have mentioned are so good, it should take only a 3-5 uses in a month to get a sense of payback and satisfaction from which ever program you choose.