Choosing an Image Editor or Web Program

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).

The most popular image editors are Photoshop Photoshop Elements, and Fireworks, and the most popular Web design programs, include 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 hundreds of dollars) 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 CS5, and previous version CS4 and CS3, are part of a powerful suite of tools you can use to create, edit, and manipulate images. This is a professional program, with a professional price tag, so unless you already have Photoshop CS5, it may be more more than you need (or want to pay for).

If you do want to upgrade to the lastest version, consider investing in one of the CS5 suites -- find the right CS5 suite for you in this program list comparison.

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:

Tutorial: This introduction to Photoshop Elements shows you how to use the tools

Optimize images for the Web - you'll find the same Save for Web dialog in Photoshop Elements as in Photoshop CS5

How to: A guide to preserving photos

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.