blue27 — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:20:00 +0000

Not of the ones mentioned are vector. If you are designing websites then Photoshop is certainly the defacto favorite although it could be argued that Fireworks is better.
If you are designing logos or other graphics that generally need to be resizeable then a vector program like Adobe Illustrator would be preferable.

Megan — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:31:43 +0000

Check this thread to find out what designers around here are using.

Adobe Photoshop is the de facto professional standard in graphics design software. We could debate why that is and whether it should be but the fact is that most serious professionals use it as their primary editor.

Tim is a bit incorrect about Fireworks - it's not actually a vector application, it just sort of behaves like one while drawing raster images. If you don't know what the distinction is between raster and vector, do a google search to find out. A good designer should be able to work with both formats. The most common vector application is Adobe Illustrator.

These products do cost quite a lot - you can save money by using Paint Shop Pro (which is about 1/5 the price) or open source software like the Gimp.

timjpriebe — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:17:42 +0000

Some of the more popular graphics software includes Photoshop, Fireworks and Paint Shop Pro. With each of those three, the purpose and cost of the software varies greatly. Some software (Fireworks) is geared more towards vector images, while other (Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro) is geared more towards raster images.