After so many years, I still have to say that Adobe Photoshop is the king in this realm. As for Photoshop 7.0, which I currently own, I would say I'm completely satisfied and I really appreciate its well-roundness in terms of features and functions. It's true there are many substitutes available on the market, and it's fair to say that there's no point to use photoshop when all you want to do is adjust a photo's contrast. But if you ever involve yourself in some sort of designing or creative art producing task, you will find photoshop just makes your life so much easier. Its excellent integrability makes it the only thing you need to turn your brilliant idea into real work. It's fairly complicated and it does require some time and effort to get to handle it. But in my opinion Photoshop definitely worth the effort. My suggestion is spend some time learning it and try to master it, then you can get more and more from the software, and the skill might prove to be really useful at some point.

zenyc

San Francisco, CA

Adobe Photoshop is a leader on professional photo-editing market for many years (I cannot imagine someone else on this place, it would be a revolution :) ). It is a very powerful, stable and often fun-to-use image processing application. I thank Adobe that I can edit my own photos and look better... But I said it many times and it seems that I will say it again and again in a future: too much money... I am always complaining about the price, it is very expensive!!! If you want to buy it only for editing your private photos than probably you are very rich... If you are a proffessional and use it for work - probably it will cover the expenses (or not :) ). I didn't discover many new feachures. I would say that previous versions of this product have everything what you need. What I noticed is that Adobe Photoshop 7.0 improves the capabilities and easy of use. If you need to a high-end image editor, I would advice you Photoshop. 

finik

Philadelphia, PA

I didn't know what Photoshop was until a few years back, and now I can't get enough of it. I had friends who were always playing on it, but I had no clue about how to do anything on it. I knew what it was, but nothing else. I started playing with it one day and I couldn't stop. I would just play with it and learn more and more things I could do every day. You really can't learn everything there is to do on Photoshop. I'm pretty sure that is impossible, but you can do so many amazing things. I just taught myself how to use this software and I can't get enough of it. If there is a picture that needs to be editted, Photoshop. Make funny pictures, slideshows, even webpages and things like that. The possibilities are endless. If you haven't tried Photoshop, then try it, and you will be hooked!

nickpeters01

Auburn, AL

There is something about Photoshop 7.0. It might be familiarity... I have been using the same software for years now and whenever I want to create an animated gif there is one place I go to: version 7.0. All of the essential retouching tools are there so if you can buy this software second-hand I would recommend it. Sure, it will not help you to lie with an image as effectively as CS5 and if you want to clean up a portrait you could do worse than use Portrait Professional but when you just want to clean up an image here and there and you don't mind learning how to use software by trial and error then this is the right place to come. If you want ease of use you could try Photoshop Elements 7.0 or more recent but Elements does not give you some of the bells and whistles that the full Photoshop does, like the ability to create animated gifs...

JohnLamerand

Middleville, MI

I was first introduced to photosho in high school and I am glad that I found this wonderful program. I am aware that photoshop its in is CS5 Stages but that is mainly for those that really know their stuff. I tend to use photoshop just for brightening and making pictures pop a bit. I am really just a non- photographic person so for me I do not need the glitz and glamour that photoshop CS5 has to offer. That being said, if you are new to editing photographs then this is the program that you want to start your training and maybe one day you can use photoshop CS5. Thats exactly what I would call this program, a starter program. However, it does what CS5 does so why load your computer with a huge program that does the same if you are a begginer. Prizewise, this software is really cheap since its really old but dont let that scare you because it still works. At the end of the day, this is great for that begginer.

GiovanniSodi

Modesto, CA

I'm actually a programmer, not a graphic artist, so it might sound strange that I'm using photoshop. In my day-to-day work though, I get a lot of assets from artists who are not necessarily familiar with the specific requirements/setup needed in my work. Photoshop lets me easily take their artwork, and make the necessary alterations to it to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done to the image programatically. I've seen a lot of art programs, and while the interfaces in those terrify me, the layout of Photoshop is clean, simple, and relatively intuitive (even for a non-artist). There are also a myriad of features that are really useful for common image-cleaning-up related tasks. Another nice thing about Photoshop is that due to it's pervasiveness, there's a ton of tutorials out there for the not-so-artistically inclined like myself that aim to explain things on a very high level. Overall, I find that Photoshop is a great tool for artists and non-artists alike, if you're willing to invest the time to learn your way around it.

hklown

Tempe, AZ

I am not a very artistic person and Photoshop 7.0 can really help people like me disguise some of my inabilities to create. As a program, its very user friendly and helps you do simple thing such as photo editing and applying various lenses customizations to images. My brother also uses Photoshop to create graphics such as banners, logos, avatars, ads, and even T-shirt designs. With the easy use of effects and layering of images, it can trick a lot of people into thinking you may be more artistic than you truly are. I use this software a lot to add text to images so it blends in much better than any other "comes with your computer" software such as paint. The tools also make it easy to crop pictures and improve lighting, coloring, tint, red eyes, and things to those factors. I would definitely recommend this program to both casual users and those looking to start being creative and voyage on the path of graphic designing.  

brianwhamilton

Philadelphia, PA

Despite all the upgrades I've seen from this version, CS5 and those before it, this was the starting point. While some were still using CS2 or CS3, I was still using this and getting the job done right just as well as some of my peers. It's an easy to use interface and easy to understand once you search around the Internet, a good starting point for those new to Photoshop software and so forth. Did a lot of experimenting starting out and led me to knowing it relatively well enough in my opinion. Playing around was always fun with photos, making people look good or bad, adjusting colors and so forth. It can also be used as design software, so having both Photoshop and Illustrator would be good as they both go hand in hand as far as graphics go. I haven't experienced any flaws or faults although an auto-save feature would be nice but that is up to you to keep on top though. Overall great piece of software. 

lockerzhhs

Long Beach, CA

I have been in photography for more than 8 years now. I am a professional photographer doing photography for my living. I have been taking picture in various locations and in various scene modes. I am kind of photographer who spends more time behind the camera than on the computer editing pictures continuously with the software. This photoshop is something that makes the processing pictures really easy. I like to be quick and efficient. For me time is money and the more time I spend clicking pictures give me more time to market my picture. This software has everything that the older version has plus has many new additional features. It has been upgraded with much better algorithms that are reasy to use and makes my work easier and efficient. Unlike older versions it does not slow down the speed of my computer to great extent. It has been made more user friendly and has many more options to personalize the settings. I would recomment this to any one interested in photography and would like to add the wow factor to their pictures.

k20damit

Toledo, OH

I am not one of those people that knows how to use every single little option on Photoshop, and that is why I haven't upgraded from PHotoshop 7 yet.  It does everything that I could possibly want to do, and it has a bunch of options that I don't even know what they are for. It is really quite impressive if you have never used a program like this before to just play around and see what some of the options are.  Even if you don't know what a lot of them do, this is intuitive enough that you can figure things out on your own or by using internet walk-throughs.  I'm sure I would get more out of this if I were to take a class, but I just haven't felt the need for it yet. I will say that there are definatley more user-friendly programs out there for photo editing, but there is a reason that the pros all use Photoshop and that is because it is the best and gives you the most options.  You might have enough program and wish you had more features, but you will never get a program and wish you had less options, and that is why I think PHotoshop is a great program.

do14chamberlain

Henderson, NV