2 Suites, 1 Choice

Graphics apps for imaging pros

Masterful software that manipulates photos and vector graphics is bread and butter for digital designers. The Adobe brand is so dominant that in some circles, Photoshop has become a verb. But Adobe is by no means the only game in town for creative pros. If you're scrounging coins for high-end graphics software, then consider the stellar CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12.0, which costs a fraction of the price of Adobe Creative Suite 2.0.

Corel's Draw and Photo-Paint provide features and quality that are similar to those of Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop. The interfaces of all of these apps provide myriad windows and menus for fine-tuning your projects. CorelDraw also lets you customize the appearance of the tools on your screen--even to mimic the look of Photoshop--and its documents integrate with Photoshop, handy if your clients use Adobe files.

In addition to its photo touch-up and illustration programs, the Corel suite also includes its RAVE app for making animations, while the Adobe suite comes with InDesign print page-layout software.

When is comes to the crunch, Corel has the price advantage, but Photoshop has its huge community to support itself with tons of plug-ins. So in the end its really your choice, whatever you might choose, it’s the end product which matters.

So till my next post ya, its bye from Ganz.