Alright, so you’ve got a PC now, or at least you have one in mind. Next, you’ll need one or more programs to do your design work. Here’s an overview of the most prominent pieces of software for photo editing and graphic design:
Photoshop
Developed by Adobe, Photoshop is easily the most broadly used and recognizable photo editing and graphic design software on the market. It boasts intuitive design, deep capabilities, universal compatibility, and extensive support. Any professionals or aspiring professionals would do well to start here, unless deterred by the recurring cost.
Photoshop is available in a bundled subscription with Lightroom for $119.88 per year from Adobe’s website.
Paintshop Pro
Developed by Corel, Paintshop Pro is a professional-grade photo editing and graphic design software. It boasts a similar set of features to Adobe Photoshop, but due to it being less well-known and less broadly-used in professional communities, it is available cheaper and does not require a subscription. This lack of a recurring cost makes it desirable for people new to photo editing as well as small-team or freelance workers. But those intending to transition into a larger or established graphic design company or position may need to make use of Photoshop.
A single-user commercial license of Paintshop Pro can be purchased for $79.99 from Corel’s website.
Lightroom
Developed by Adobe, Lightroom is a robust photo organizing and basic photo editing software designed to work in conjunction with Photoshop. It is a program which Adobe develops alongside Photoshop as a means of organizing, cataloguing, and doing initial/quick edits to photos that are shared across all of your devices.
Lightroom is available in a bundled subscription with Photoshop for $119.88 per year from Adobe’s website.
CorelDRAW
Developed by Corel, CorelDRAW is a suite of related Corel programs focused on digital drawing and sketching; logo and font design; and graphic design. Likely Corel’s most well-known software, CorelDRAW sees use by a lot of creative professionals. But due to the large set of features it provides (and despite its lack of a recurring subscription cost), new users may find it prohibitively expensive.
A single-user commercial license of CorelDRAW can be purchased for $499.00 from Corel’s website.
Illustrator
Developed by Adobe, Illustrator is a vector drawing graphic design program. It is used for the creation and editing of logos, artwork, and illustrations. It is capable of automatically tracing and converting line work into vectors, and sees a lot of use by graphic design professionals.
Illustrator is available as a subscription for $239.88 per year from Adobe’s website.
GIMP (Free)
Developed by The GIMP Team, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free and open-source image editing and photo retouching software. GIMP boasts a wide array of very thorough features and capabilities, on-par with most professional-grade paid software; the trade-off is that GIMP has a steep learning curve, a lack of some ease-of-use/automatic functions available in the big-name options, and a sometimes-unintuitive user interface.
You can download GIMP for free from The GIMP Team’s website.
paint.net (Free)
Developed by dotPDN, paint.net is a free (but not open-source) image manipulation and pixel drawing tool. It began life as a free alternative to Microsoft Paint, developed by a single person. But as it was developed (still by a very small team), it slowly incorporated some additional functionality which is more typically associated with Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, and GIMP. Although not nearly as feature-rich as those competitors, paint.net instead provides intuitive, simple, and easy-to-use interfaces and tools.
You can download paint.net for free from dotPDN’s website, or you can purchase it (with automatic updating and some further virtues) for $8.99 from the Windows store.
InDesign
Developed by Adobe, InDesign is an industry-leading graphic design software geared specifically toward layout design for magazines, journals, websites, news publications, and the like. While not an image editor per se, InDesign is an important part of the creative process at many journalistic, graphic design, and creative companies.
InDesign is available as a subscription for $239.88 per year from Adobe’s website.
PhotoDirector
Developed by CyberLink, PhotoDirector is a basic, consumer-grade image editing software. Similar in many ways to the kinds of image editing functions natively provided by Windows and Mac stock photo applications, PhotoDirector is not suitable for professional users who need a wide variety of powerful options in their software.
It may, however, be suitable for users who just want a cheap and simple solution that will allow them to make adjustments to images in software with an accountable support staff. It may also be suitable for users who are already familiar with CyberLink’s UI design, due to working with their more well-known video editing software, PowerDirector.
You can purchase a single-user commercial license of PhotoDirector for $99.99 from the CyberLink store.