Photoshop vs Adobe

[Sekani]

I figure some of you artsy people might know something about this.

If you're familiar with Creative Suite 3, you'd see that right now Adobe has about twenty different programs that all do the same thing. What's the difference between Photoshop and, say, Illustrator, or Fireworks, or InDesign, or insert-image-editor-here? I had originally thought that Photoshop was more or less the flagship super-program while all the other ones offered tools for more specialized tasks while costing less money. Illustrator was targeted to print editors, for example, while Fireworks was supposed to be for web design.

Naturally for, uh, "reasons" price isn't really an issue, yet people still swear by various other CS3 programs besides Photoshop. So what's the real difference between them? Is there any reason to use one program over another when they all do (basically) the same thing?

[Rashiid]

Never really knew there were other things besides Photoshop....

[Sayara]

Photoshop is part of the suite of the adobe family as you already know, essentually you can do EVERYTHING in one program however people feel that its handy to have the others.

Illustrator shines brightly with its VECTOR abilities (more so than photoshop.) for example:

but you need to really need the other abilities alot to really consider getting the suite.

Photoshop is fine enough for casual use of the series.

[EJ]

Many people I know use Gimp since it is free and all but I prefer PS because it better imo plus now a days you can get it free thanks to good old internet.

[astuarlen]

They don't all do basically the same thing.
Admittedly, I have not used every single program in Creative Suite (I-III) but here's a quick rundown:

-Photoshop excels in raster (pixel-dependent) imaging. Paths are very limited, as are its animation capabilities.
-Illustrator excels in vector imaging.
-InDesign: print/document/publishing/layout.
-After Effects: film and animation editing.
-Dreamweaver: web design.
-Flash: interactivity.
-Bridge: organization.
etc

Those are the ones I know off the top of my head. You can find more info elsewhere, of course, and Wikipedia seems to have a nice summary.

Edit: I find it quite humorous that Photoshop has become the "default" image editor, thanks to the ease of obtaining illegitimate copies and it's "cool factor", when all most people want to do is make artless MS Paint-esque collages. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_clown.gif

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astuarlen on 2008-04-09 17:51 ]</font>

[VioletSkye]

Premiere - Video editing/production.
Soundbooth - Audio editting
Fireworks - image editting/creating for web development
Encore - DVD and Blu-Ray authoring as well as swf exporting tools for use on on websites.

[Retehi]

Besides graphic design, Illustrator kicks major butt when it comes to inking.

Photoshop for the usual rendering, but I prefer Painter X. I just have PS do the touch ups/lighting/clipping mask stuff.


I find it quite humorous that Photoshop has become the "default" image editor, thanks to the ease of obtaining illegitimate copies and it's "cool factor", when all most people want to do is make artless MS Paint-esque collages.

Don't forget Sonic/Zelda sprite recolors.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Retehi on 2008-04-09 18:20 ]</font>

[Weeaboolits]

I use Paint Shop Pro, but I don't do enough image editing to really compare it to anything else.

[Sekani]

I've done enough research to know that the actual capabilities of the various graphics products overlap so much that the difference between them isn't so much what they can do, but how they do it.

At the moment, though I only have a medium level of experience with Photoshop, I really don't understand what would make it worthwhile to switch to (or at least become familiar with) Fireworks for web graphics/design or Illustrator for drawing.

[Blitzkommando]

I would hardly describe Photoshop as 'casual' in any meaning of the term. Even with college discounts that single application is expensive (though, certainly, $299 is far cheaper than the retail). For most people I would say there are much cheaper (if not legally free) alternatives that offer great capability for most situations. Paint.NET, GIMP, and Paint Shop Pro all come to mind with PSP obviously being the most polished and feature-filled of the three. Really, I would even suggest someone get Photoshop Elements first as, again, 99% of the time they won't even use all of the functionality found within it.

Of course, that will potentially change with Adobe finally adding 64-bit support to Photoshop CS4 (Windows only oddly enough). I can't tell you how many times I've had any number of photo editors hit that lovely 2GB (memory address) wall and give a "Not enough memory to complete the operation". I'm pretty well damned sick of that limitation and the fact Adobe is finally catching up to that is great. I'm sure lots of professionals were happy about the move as well as that means we can finally take advantage of having 4+GB of memory. Hopefully that will be a wake up call to Corel to make a 64-bit version of PSP13.

This all said, I'm downloading the trial of CS3 as I type this. I decided to look up their student pricing and spied that they have the Web Suite Premium for $499. I did rather like Dreamweaver and having PS Extended would definitely be welcome. But, again, I'd have to wait for CS4 before I made a move simply because I would kick myself for not getting the 64-bit version when photo editing and graphics/content creation were two big reasons I went to 64-bit and went with 4GB of memory as I tend to work with drawings of mine at rather high resolutions/DPI.

[Sharkyland]

I used to love when Paintshop Pro used to be owned by Jasc. The bundle came along with animation shop, and I got pretty used to the controls though I have worked with Adobe to some extent, but I am not very familiar with it.

[Nai_Calus]

Photoshop and Illustrator do entirely different things, unless they've massively changed the capabilities of both since PS7/I10. >_>;

I stubbornly stick with my ancient pirated copy of PS6 though since I loathe PS7's brush engine, and it does not work at all with my tablet. >_> Illustrator broke on one of the times the files got transferred between computers, I should see about fixing that.

I use PSP7 for some things and Photoshop for others, though, since both are better for different things. Sprite editing is easier and more sensible in PSP than it is in PS. Photo editing is better in PS. Browsing through files, cropping and resizing for avatars and making the border on them is easier for me to do in PSP. Photoshop's text features are much better for making sigs, and its save for web does a better job for that than PSP does. If I'm CGing a picture I've drawn it's easier to do the flat colouring in PSP, but the line prep and actual shading gets done in PS, etc.

If I found myself with a need for vector graphics I'd get Illustrator working and use that.

When I want to just do quick sketchy pieces I get out my tablet and the copy of Painter Classic that came with it and work in that with the pencil and watercolour tools, or sometimes some of the other paints.

There's a lot of difference between different programs, even ones that more or less cover the same area. I keep the different ones for different things and use them according to what I want to do. *shrug*