Choosing an Image Editor or Web Program
Roll your cursor over this image of the Adkins twins to see their faces.
Sorting through all the Web design and image editing programs available can be confusing. That's why we created this review to help you find the best program for your project (and budget).
In this review, you find descriptions of the most popular image editors and Web design programs, including Photoshop Photoshop Elements, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, GoLive, and Expression Web.
Comparing image editing programs
You’ll find many choices in the world of image editing programs, from high-end programs such as Adobe Photoshop (which retails for about $650) to simple programs that you can download for free over the Internet. Here’s a quick comparison of some of the most popular image editing programs.
Adobe Photoshop
By far the most popular image editing program among professionals, Photoshop CS4 is a powerful suite of tools that lets you create, edit, and manipulate images. This is a professional program, with a professional price tag (about $650), so unless you have a big budget or you’re a serious photographer or designer, it’s probably more than you need (or will want to pay for).
Learn more about Photoshop:
Video Tutorials: Visit Total Training for online instructions and award-winning training videos for begginners and advanced Photoshop training.
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Photoshop Elements features many of the same powerful tools as it's bigger sibling, Photoshop, but it’s easier to use and costs less than $100. Photoshop Elements provides more than enough power for almost anything you’d need to do on a small Web site, including optimizing images so they download faster over the Internet.
Learn more about Photo Editing and Elements:
Photoshop vs. Photoshop Elements...
The difference between the two versions of Photoshop boils down to this: The expensive version is used by people like magazine editors and high-fashion photographers to do painstaking, exacting work on their photos, to make a flawless image suitable for viewing by millions and optimized for print. Given enough time, you can use Photoshop to make a mule look like a supermodel. For the rest of us, who just want to edit photos, or maybe make it look like Uncle Ernie’s basset hound was driving the lawnmower, Photoshop Elements can handle it.
Adobe Fireworks
Formerly, Macromedia Fireworks, this image program was designed for the web and has many special features for creating images that look great on the Internet. With Fireworks you can create animated images and slideshows for your Web pages. You can also create images in Fireworks and use the special Slicing tool to cut the image into pieces before exporting it directly into a fully-functional Web page. Because Fireworks includes HTML features and is integrated with Dreamweaver, you can easily move back and forth between the two programs. If you’re a professional Web designer, or you’re creating lots of complex designs for the Web, this is a great tool to have on your hard drive.
