There are hundreds of different image editing software out in the market right now. But are they all worth the trouble? Or the money? Not really. There are good ones and there are, well, not so good ones. We won't bother mentioning the latter. Otherwise here is a list of the five best image editing software on the market.
1. Adobe Photoshop
Who doesn't know Photoshop? Not everyone knows how to use it, but most people have heard about it one way or the other. It is only one of the most popular, if not the most popular, image editing software of our times.
Adobe Photoshop is a vector image editing software program developed by Adobe Systems. It is the primary market leader for commercial image and bitmap manipulation for some years now, and is the company's flagship product. The most recent version Adobe Photoshop CS4 is sold at $999, though a student license is also available at only $199, just about.
2. Adobe Photoshop Elements
Another innovative image editing product from Adobe Systems. Photoshop Elements is different from Photoshop in that it is a raster image editing program, Photoshop being a vector-based editing program. It is available as a consumer product and costs only about 1/6th of the professional version. Elements contain much simpler features than its counterpart.
3. Corel Paint Shop Pro
Corel Paint Shop Pro holds the honor of being the key competitor of Adobe Photoshop in the image editing software market. It was developed by Minneapolis-based company Jasc Sofware, which Corel took over in October 2004. Raster graphics used to be the application's specialty, though in later versions vector graphics were made compatible with it as well.
One of the main reasons why Corel Paint Shop Pro lost its edge over the Adobe Photoshop is its being available only on Microsoft platforms. Photoshop on the other hand was also available in Apple Macintosh platforms, giving it enough edge to gain superior market position.
4. Aviary
Aviary is a popular online image editing software released in 2008, when it left it's beta version in October. It is freeware, meaning it is free to download. If you want, you can apply for a subscription membership for additional tools and features, called blue plan membership. Blue plan members are also given the privilege to test the latest alpha releases of the product.
5. Aperture
The last item on the list. Aperture is an image editing software program developed for the Mac OSX. It was intended to assist professional photographers do post-production work, but some features make it suitable for image editing, too. The newest version is Aperture 2.0, released in February 2008. It retails at $199 which is a huge cut off from the $499 retail price of version 1.0.
There you go, the five best image editing software programs currently out on the market. Tune in next year and find out if Adobe Photoshop is finally knocked off its high horse.
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