dholmes wrote:
I would like to start using a program primarily to design graphics for my website and as a secondary purpose to edit photographs. Is photoshop the best program for this? In looking at the adobe web site and others photoshop is priced at $700 US. At this price the cost seems prohibitive. Is thier any cheaper way to start??
If pure photo editing is what you primarily want, then Corel PhotoPaint is practically equal to Photoshop. PhotoPaint’s sharpening filters are very sophisticated. As a whole the program does not have all the bells and whistles for publishing as Photoshop, but for photographs it is far, far superior to Photoshop’s "little brother" Elements. Many recommend Elements, but it is not suitable for serious work. It lacks a Curve tool, and even worse, it does not support 16-bit files.
A high-quality scanner or digital camera will give you 16-bit output, and this will enable you to adjust the color and contrast of your images to your heart’s content. By using 16-bit color TIFF files (in the case of a digital camera ofte extracted from a RAW format) you can get brilliant pictures even from severely underexposed images, and you will avoid many burned-out highlights. Therefore you will need a program that can handle 16-bit if you are serious about photographs.
Paint Shop Pro is often suggested too, but that also lack 16-bit support. So for high quality it seems you have to choose between Photoshop and PhotoPaint from Corel. The latter is a part of the Corel Graphics suite, and is top notch. In my country it costs $550 and it is not likely to be cheap where you live either, so you might want to save for that solution. If Photoshop is what you want you had better hurry, because Adobe wants to introduce Product Activation on their coming versions, making the program forever dependent on the manufacturer. It may take years before the market, and in particular competition from Open Source programs, forces them to abandon PA, so if you really want Photoshop – buy it now and stay with it.
Do not forget Linux either. If you use Linux, you may use a combination between Filmgimp/Cinepaint and GIMP. Filmgimp handles 16-bit color so you can do your color, levels and contrast adjustments there, and then you can perform the final touch in GIMP which has better sharpening filters in addition to layers and other niceties. (Sharpening must be done as the last step irrespective of what program you use, in case you did not know.)
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Per Inge Oestmoen, Norway
http://www.alpha-gruppen.com/ 
