Buying Adobe Photoshop or illustrator? how much? and which?

Question

I want to get something like these for my computer, but i've heard they're like £400, is that true or is that just the really, really good ones for companies.
Is there a cheaper one and how much is that? Everyone seems to have it, and everyone can't be that rich!!!
help and advice needed.

Answer 1

Adobe Products are excellent ... and expensive.
Illustrator is $500 US and Photoshop is $650 US.
Most of the people you see posting about these programs on here have downloaded them illegally on P2P networks. Especially telling are people who ask how to do very basic things on the latest software .... people who invest that kind of money in software generally "work up" to the programs, upgrading as they outgrow lesser programs.

Which program you get depends on your needs. If you do illustrating, then a program like Corel Draw or Illustrator is what you want. If you do photo manipulating and graphics editing, then Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paintshop Pro are for you. There are also specialty programs, the primary kind most general users would be interested in are those that enable you to "paint" using the computer. Corel Painter is one of these.

If you want to do photo manipulating and enhancing, and things like that, but are not a professional (as yet), then you might look in to Adobe Photoshop Elements, or Corel Paintshop Pro, both of which are available for under $100 US.

If you want a program for painting like on canvas, but on the computer, then Corel Painter Essentials is also under $100 US.

All of the Adobe and Corel programs have 30 day free trials available for download, so that you can try the program out and see if it suits your needs.

http://www.corel.com
http://www.adobe.com

Additionally, there are some excellent free programs available online, the best ones are linked below.

Picasa is a simple program, but excellent especially for cataloging all the images on your computer, it also does basic editing, and can be used for making collages, etc.

Photo Plus and Photofiltre are good for photo editing and manipulating. Gimpshop is similar to photoshop (3rd link down) ad does those tasks very well, and can use plugins.

PaintNet and Pixia are more for original art and graphics, as is dogwaffle, but dogwaffle also has a lot of features for painting on computer like a canvas.

On the same website as PhotoPlus (by Serif) is a program similar to Illustrator.

http://picasa.google.com/index.html
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/PaintNET/1096481993/1
http://www.plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/
http://www.photofiltre.com
http://park18.wakwak.com/~pixia/
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Project_Dogwaffle/dogwaffle.html


I hope this is helpful to you.
There are online tutorials available for all of these programs.
Also, there are excellent books available, in the UK as well, that are inexpensive and are called "In Easy Steps", with various subtitles.

Sorry my $ amounts were in US$ ... I don't know the current exchange or UK websites.

Answer 2

most folks "borrow" from their rich friends
problem is now on the newer software Adobe makes they put a little bit of code that sends out a message on the net ever so often...so if your rich friend has regestered the software and Adobe discovers it on your machine they can make it stop working...

Photoshop is around 400 us dollars
not quite sure what illistrator runs but it should be in the same range. you can probably find older versions of the programs on e-bay for a little less.. but go no lower than photoshop 6 (right now photoshop is on 9 its called Photoshop CS2, illistrator is on 11 or higher)

you should only get the programs based on what you need to do... illistrator is for making illistrations on the computer by hand it works best with a graphics pad for drawing. but if you are going to work on photos and scanned art work photoshop is best...it also has some drawing elements to it if you want to do a little freehand work with it...

Answer 3

Here I got CorelDraw for free http://bitly.com/1r2gd82
It's a must have program.

Answer 4

if your a design student you get it cheaper, it depends what you wanna do you can get the whole creative suite which i think is a good deal, but if you just wanna touch up photos Photoshop and illustrator is more for designing in vector instead of pixels.