paint shop pro or adobe photoshop

Adobe, by far. You can do a lot more with it and there are more programs and plugins that are compatible with Adobe. Granted one is $100 and the other is about $500-600. (I'm not asking ANY questions). At first, it's a little tough to get used to and learn, but once you get the hang of it, it's great. By the way, I sent you a total of 5 different airplane models. If you don't get them all, let me know. The main two are the Cessna and the Fairy Swordfish.

I prefer PSP over Adobe, has as many plugins, and is easier to use, anything compatble with Adobe photoshop can be used in PSP, I've picked up stuff everywhere and have yet to have a problem...

once again boomer thanks.

Or you could try Photoshop Elements, way cheaper than Photoshop but powerfull enough to do decent postwork. Josselin

I like Corel photopaint for versitility with PSP coming up third - but I intend to get PSP at some point for ease of use. For the price PSP is in my opinion the best. The last I heard PSP had a try before you buy demo. - TJ

Photoshop Elements, now in Version 2. About $100, very versatile. I don't know what they leave out of the high end version of Photoshop in order to justify the difference in price, but whatever it is I don't miss it.

Ulead PhotoImpact is less than 100, uses Photoshop plugins. Check out the features. http://www.ulead.com/pi/runme.htm

Attached Link: Photopaint for $49

Personally I don't like photopaint, but that's mainly because I have the dtch version and all the names of standard tools have really weird and unlogical names. I think it's powerfull and probably much easier to use in english. Personally I use PSP, but Photoshop is the most powerfull of the three and the most commonly used. It's an industry standard.

As per GROINGRINDER, if you can get Corel 9 for 50 bucks THAT's the way to go. (BTW you can use most photoshop plugins in Corel photopaint.) - TJ

They're both brilliant, it all depends on you're budget. I use both depends what I'm trying to do with the image and what the final format(s) going to be.

I will defer to a survey that was done in britain (I believe by Computer Arts Magazine) of 1300 web designers on what software they use. 100% of them started all websites with Adobe Photoshop. It's always been the program I used, although I hear there are some things PSP can do that PSP can't, it may be negligable.

For the money, easy of use and with full compatibility with plug-ins it is hard to beat Ulead's PhotoImpact!!!

Cursin' through. Interesting, I might be off base here; seems its more of an opinon question. I use both Photoshop and PSP. For quick layer studies [multipass work] I use PSP which can save out psd files [as well as a lot of other formats ps can't save or load] then use the settings in After Effects if I do animations. When it comes to decal work on 3d models I use Photoshop because you can quickly readjust a layer plus it's alpha function it makes it the best here. Then again, when it comes to 'art' and images [character studies and such] I use Painter 6 along with the Wacom 12x12 tablet. Had PSP first then Painter 6. Got PS[6] with the Digital Video Collection... needed AE and Premiere for multipass anim work... Looks like one needs to ask 'what do you need' at present and what will do.

My choice is Corel's PhotoPaint. I find the user interface cleaner (always annoyed at having to move those pallet things cause what I want is under them), the printer interface has more versatility (dynamic temporary resample to size in the print preview), more tools for pressure/angle sensitive wacom (it's a way of life!) and better access to on the fly brush alterations. And I have yet to find an effects filter that won't function. Personal opinion!

Well, I "grew up" with PSP. Use it since years (when it was delivered on 3,5' Floppies :) ) - no need to change. PS is to huge for me. It takes hours for me to navigate through all menus or settings. To difficult. Greets, Jimi

I use PS, PSP and Photo Impact. Each has it's own unique qualities, but in my opinion PS out rates the others over all. If I was limited to just one app it would defiantly be PS.

Again, what's your usage. PS is good, to be sure, but I could not use it as I would Painter6 [I know for I tried]. PS is far behind what Painter can do. On loading for quick easy studies of layers [while reamining reliable] PSP is fine. I do not find PS to be a 'major' player in my work environment... but then again that's mine. I would rather have Painter and PSP for the work I do on a whole. And on a whole I could not do what I do without AE or Premiere. I output my anims [2 b] as image sequences so this works from Bryce to Poser to any 3d package I use, but it takes AE or Premiere. I can also cram in any PS PSP Illustrator or such image file into it as well. If I had only one app I'd be dead... :)

Attached Link: http://www.gimp.org/

My favorite plugins are the Flaming Pear collection...

Photo-Paint hands down for general image editing chores. It does everything PS does with a better interface (totally customizable) and more. Brushes are better and it also has an image sprayer (which PS doesn't have at all). It also does CMYK and LAB mode which PSP and Photoimpact dont. (But I love Photoimpact anyway, it's just neat.) And Photo-paint is more efficient than PS. I was writing a bunch of tutes on doing the same thing in both PS and Photo-paint. In every darn case Photo-paint used fewer steps! And no clumsy two-handed shortcut keys because you can define 'em any way you want! Easier selections and masking in Photo-paint too. If you just want to paint, though, Painter is the best. Nothing comes close to its brushes.

This brings something to mind... File sizes. Guess one reason I'd rather go PSP over PS [in multpass study modes... which get to 15+ layers...] is the file sizes. A saved 640x480 6 layer psp image comes in around 800k while a psd come in around 1.8mgs... zipped it comes in around 1.2mgs... still higher than the psp file. Just something that means disk space-study stuff for me... plus it takes longer for large layer studies to load in PS and the layer requester is not as easy to work with as PSP is. Still I'm glad I have PS. But than again... it's just a tool that has it's place.

Spit, you can output CMYK in PSP7 easily...I don't it all the time for my print work =)

Oops, sorry about that, but that's a recent addition to PSP, no? It still doesn't do LAB mode though which I find gives better results with most plugins like KPT6 Equalizer than RGB mode. PSP is a fine program though, no question about it.