Photoshop is pretty much industry standard for photo editing and manipulation. If you want to "design" things, I'd say to go with Adobe Illustrator. Once you get the hang of the pen tool, and figure out live trace, Illustrator will become your program of choice. Maybe try to get the entire Adobe Creative Suite, which includes a variety of programs including Photoshop and Illustrator.

One note of interest:

Adobe CS2 is not fully compatible with Windows Vista operating system, so if you intend to run Vista, this may be an important factor. In particular; Photoshop may force the 'Vista Basic' theme to run when loaded, Illustrator has issues with the pallet titlebars deciding whether to be aero or basic, and ImageReady has significant issues with the pallets displaying consistently.

That said, I agree with Adamness in that Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are the industry standards, and for good reason. They produce files that are compatible with most industry graphics projects.

I would say that you should take into account what long term projects you may want to do with the graphics program you decide to purchase. If you are only going to be creating content for things like customization programs and computer graphics based projects, then CorelDRAW is a viable alternative to the more expensive Adobe product.

If on the other hand you might want to create professional web based or print based graphic content as well as DesktopX projects, then Adobe is probably a better long term decision.

Mormegil (Paul Boyer) wrote a set of tutorials in designing an icon set, which shows the potential of CorelDRAW. In his experienced hands it is quite obvious that fantastic results can be attained by using that program. You can find the index here http://mormegil.wincustomize.com/Articles.aspx?SID=83&AID=64104

One other note on Adobe's creative suite is that the programs in the suite work extremely well together where exporting and importing files between the programs is concerned. You also have the ability to run some files 'live' where the same file might be opened in two of the programs and editing the file in one program is updated in real time in the other program.

If you decide to paint, Corel has just released 'Painter X' which is fully compatible with both Vista and Intel-based Macs.

I didn't know they released a new version. I gotta start saving up to upgrade. Thanks for the heads up.

Has anyone tried (or does anyone use) Xara Xtreme? I find it's an excellent graphics program. It seems to be 100% compatible with Vista. They have recently released a newer version called Xtreme Pro that is compatible with PhotoShop including layers.

Just curious...

Hi Michelle,

Ivce just noticed your post about corel and photoshop and your dead right. So, the best way to do it is to buy both. I will do you BOTH Adobe CS2 Creative Suite AND Corel 9 for £49.99 and I guarantee they will work.

Suggested contact removed - Admin.

you know its a sad day when someone offers up a $1200 program along with another and guarantees it.. yeah I'll stick with the 'real' thing thanks :/

I refference to Corky_O's reply... I'm sure whatever compatability problems Adobes programs are having with Vista will soon be corrected.

Let's not offer cut-price warez on this site, OK?.....

Hello everyone ... Thanks for taking the time to respond. I have pretty well decided to go with Adobe CS2 for now for several reasons among which are: I have been offered the Suite from ADOBE for half price (NOT a too-good-to-be-true offer). Also it is the industry standard for picture processing and I have no doubt that it is useful in many other graphics capabilities too. I will be running Vista again soon enough when I have the extra time to muscle through its idiosyncrasies, and I have no doubt that Adobe will soon make it totally compatible.

Additionally, I was considering upgrading an old version of Photoshop Elements (2.0), but for only 3 times the cost of that, I can get the CS2 Suite. So all in all, I think the CS2 suite will be fine for now. BUT, I will look into the Illustrator program for possible future expansion. Again, THANKS to all of you. Michelle

Corel. Period.