Professional Software

The most powerful photo-editing programs

As noted elsewhere in this report, GIMP -- a free open-source program -- rivals Adobe Photoshop (*Est. $665) for complexity and power. Most professional photographers, graphic artists and designers choose Photoshop, partly because it's the industry standard, with the most support, instruction and plug-ins available. If you're considering a career in one of these fields, experts say you might as well resign yourself to learning Photoshop. Since upgrades become available at significant savings, once you've bitten the bullet and bought it once, you can keep current at lower expense.

One of the biggest knocks against Photoshop is the steep learning curve required to master the software and its many tools. As Lesa Snider King at Macword notes, "Each new version has piled new tools on top of old, and important bits and pieces were getting lost in the shuffle." That's been cleaned up a bit in Adobe Photoshop CS4, so much so that PopPhoto.com names it the American Photo Editor's Choice imaging software for 2009 for introducing "a radical new interface that's easier and faster to use."

Not everyone is quite as impressed, however. While CNET's Lori Grunin likes the improved usability and says that might be enough to tempt users of previous versions to upgrade, she says there's little that can be done with Photoshop CS4 that can't be done with Adobe Photoshop CS3. Grunin says the new version is a "memory hog" that seems a touch slower than its predecessor. While some new tools have been added to Photoshop's already almost overwhelming arsenal, and others have been made easier to find, Photoshop CS4 has also done away with a small handful of features, such as contact sheets and picture package; Macworld notes however that plug-ins for most of those features from earlier versions will still work in Photoshop CS4. If the tools in Adobe Photoshop CS4 aren't enough, Adobe also offers Photoshop CS4 Extended (*Est. $1,000), which piles on even more tools for working with video and 3-D images.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (*Est. $275) was originally created as companion software to Adobe Photoshop and is designed to speed up the workflow involved in processing images from camera to final version. It also serves as an image-management tool. The editing tools included in the first version got mixed reviews, but they have improved to the point in the current version that many pros say they seldom reach for Photoshop any more. You can also install modules for web integration -- to export an edited photo directly to Facebook, for example.

This capacity to stand alone as an image manager, editor and web publisher makes Lightroom viable as an intermediate step between Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS4. If you're taking more photos than Elements can catalog well, and/or want to go beyond Elements without buying Photoshop, it's worth considering Lightroom as your main photo software. It's not a substitute for Photoshop when it comes to digital graphics in general, but for editing photos, reviews say it's now very deft and capable.

The current version is Adobe Lightroom 2, however Adobe Lightroom 3 is now in public beta. Improvements and new features slated for that release include the ability to handle larger image libraries, improved noise reduction, the ability to add watermarks to photos (used by pro photographers to prevent unauthorized use of their photos), a film-grain simulation tool and more. Of course, features and functions are all subject to change until the final version is released.

For Mac users only, Apple's Aperture (*Est. $200) is similar. Aperture was developed earlier than Lightroom, paving the way with nondestructive editing that automatically preserves the original files from the camera. Reviews praise Aperture, but Lightroom is earning even more top recommendations -- both for speed and editing prowess.

The latest version, Apple Aperture 3 is newly released. It includes tons of new features, including many "borrowed" from Apple's iPhoto. Those include Faces and Places, which uses face recognition and GPS support to automate organizing photos by who is in the picture or where it was taken. New editing tools, such as brushes that let the user paint special effects onto photos, are also part of the deal. We've not seen any reviews for Aperture 3 as of yet, but look for full details in our next update.