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Image Editors
There are many image editors on the market. Many
companies are trying to sell full packages for 'home' much cheaper than
each product cost separate for 'professionals'.
The most popular editors:
Adobe
photoshop
(~$500) is (or was) the "industry standard" so it is expensive
but robust.
Adobe Photoshop LE
($90) a smaller version of AP 5.0. Worth the money, Doesn't have CMYK
support.
Tip: If you buy an upgrade for Pagemaker Plus 6.5 ($99) you get
full versions of Photoshop LE, Adobe PageMill 3.0 and Adobe Distiller.
To be able to install PageMaker you need to have valid previous license,
however you don't need it if you want to install only Photoshop LE, Page
Mill or Distiller. So if you don't have license for PM, just throw that
out and you still have 3 programs for one great price.
Core PhotoPaint
PhotoPaint can be a nice alternative to PhotoShop. (from $69 to $399)
Tip:Corel has a package for $119.99 called Graphic Pack II
Inside the box you will find :
CorelXARA 1.5,Corel PHOTO-PAINT 7, CorelFLOW 3,Corel Presentations 8,
Corel Print House,Corel MOTION 3D,Corel CAPTURE ,Corel GALLERY Magic 200,000
some fonts, clipart, etc..
This is the best offer !
PhotoPaint7 is solid and XARA 1.5 is
excellent vector/bitmap drawing program itself (even 1.0 was great)!
Micrografx Picture
Publisher
has $99-$150 graphic package. Now they sell the package for $50 because
they push their new iGrafx Designer ($400). Webtricity is a great combination
of their tools for one price: Picture Publisher 8, Simply3D 3, Windows
Draw 6 and Media Manager 8.
Paint Shop Pro
from JascSoftware.$99
Other Image editing Software
Wright Image
($299 -$499) (complex but expensive)
Satori Paint
($699) (handling huge graphic - posters, movies..)
Painter
Cassic($99) , Art
Dabler($49) and Expressions ($???)
Good for the painted art (with presure sensitive pen). You can get the
software bundled when you are buying the pen.
Vector and bitmap editors (mixing vector and bitmap editing)
CompactDraw
You can't beat the $45, and secondly I am the author of it.
Corel Xara
2.0 (it is not much different from 1.5) Xara was a big hit back in time
of Corel 5.0 , however after Xara became CorelXara they don't seems to
work on it much.
Wright Design
(complex, kinda slow and a bit expensive, but worth try)
Macromedia Fireworks
2.0, 3.0
($299) Excellent for making interfaces and web graphic. I was kind of
disappointed with the 3.0 version - needs more memory, some things you
do more difficult than in 2.0 and it is crashing often so I wrote CompactDraw.
Plug-Ins
Having Image editor is not enough if you are in hurry.
The plugins can create a nice special effects (glass, page curl...) just
by clicking a few buttons - but the good ones cost a bit more...
The most interesting are:
Kai's Power tools
$129
Eye Candy (aka Alien Skin) $129
My TOP list
#1 - CompactDraw
Sorry folks, I think it does what it should for only $45 and it does
fine.
#2 - Photoshop
In image editing it is for me the standard. The PhotoshopLE is for
RGB as good as the full version.
#3 - CorelDraw
For true vector editing this is my choice.
#4 - Macromedia Fireworks
The 3.0 is still good, but I think 2.0 was their peak ratio between functionality
and easiness.