Photoshop is actually the best best. Used some other softwares too, but none has the same potential.
Photoshop is fantastic at what it does. Illustrator is fantastic at what it does too. It depends what you’re trying to produce. Like I said, nobody in the commercial world would produce a logo in Photoshop, or a brochure in anything other than Indesign or Quark. You can’t really build complete websites very easily with it either. But yes, photoshop is good.
Adobe owns this market and there is no other company/product that compares.
Use Illustrator for vector images and Photoshop for more general image manipulations
It’s by far the most common tool used out there but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best.
DAS_Matt, who said it did? The reason why Photoshop is the best has nothing todo with it’s popularity, it’s because there simply isn’t another editor out there which has the same level of functionality, theres a very good reason it is the industry standard, if it didn’t deserve it’s title you wouldn’t have every major studio using it.
Absolutely. Look at what happened with Quark and Indesign. A few years back, Quark was industry standard, but it got more and more complicated and failed to address simple bugs (runaround on by default, step and repeat set to 6 and a bit mm by default etc…). And Indesign got better and better, and was half the price. So now very few people use Quark any more (at least here in the UK).
The best app will usually win out. Unless Adobe buy it and kill it like they did with Freehand.
Yea, just a shame Adobe don’t make creative suite better value for money by including Flex Pro, Lightroom and InCopy isn’t it?
Either way I am holding out for CS5, I am not a serial upgrader so I want to get a full product life-cycle for the amount its going to cost 
I’m used to Photoshop, it is really great software
I remember Freehand!
http://www.adobe.com/products/freehand/
it seems that they will not develop it anymore, and will replace it with the Illustrator =]
Not the lone voice there. I’m a big fan of Fireworks, is great for non photos web graphics, that includes layouts, which are so easy to cut up and make into web pages :).
To answer the question in this 3 month old thread - “The best photo package is the one that does what you want to do in the least amount of time & effort”. 
Paintbrush it is. 
i used to LOVE firewords CS3. Then I met PS.
Boy, there’s no comparison. Photoshop rocks.
You’d do well to master it. Though I mix both Fireworks and PS now. Adobe owns them both now.
I use Paint Shop Pro…have every version 7, 8, 9, X, X2and X2 Ultimate (skipped X1 somehow). Have Adobe CS, Ulead’s PI version 13, tried Xara, Serif, Corel’s PhotoPaint as part of the whole Corel Draw Graphics Suite X3, I now have CS3.
And which one do I use all day long? Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate. And I use Animation Shop (Jasc) as my animation along with it. I can use any filter that was designed for PS, I use brushes, make my own…no, I can’t use the abr ext but then again, PS users can’t use the ones I make. I have a SLEW of gradients I can use and can edit them. I make my own patterns or can download free ones. I make or can find styled lines. I have control over layers, can lock them, control the opacity…have blending modes. I don’t have the styles that you do but I have a whole set of filters built in as well.
I use presets, selections, masks,and tubes. In fact I tube my own.
Most people wouldn’t be using PS if they weren’t given it by their employer or bought it while in school as it is so blasted expensive. PSP can stack up to PS for a fraction of the price.
I do have ONE issue that I can’t cure and that is the ability to export vectors in vector format BUT I can export them as shapes ASSUMING I can draw them in one continuous line.
And finding help in groups is MUCH easier in PSP than in PS…I know because I looked. 197 photoshop tutorial groups in yahoo. 699 in paint shop pro.
Many people look down on PSP without knowing anything about it…
I don’t do the same to adobe…I just know the danged software is really expensive!
Liz
I might say that it all depends on who is using this software.
Instead of Photoshop, I’m using GIMP a my image editor.
It’s the best free alternative for those people who can’t afford to buy it.
Photoshop is definitely the best in my eyes.
Alex
I wouldn’t say that Photoshop is the best software for Graphic design, because it depends on what you are trying to achieve and your familiarity with certain software. If you are looking to create vector art or logo’s that are scalable then Illustrator is a much better choice. If you are using images in your artwork then Photoshop is the industry standard, but there are other packages that are worth considering such as Corel draw or Corel painter which is great for re colouring existing art.
Photoshop in conjunction with adobe illustrator is a great combination. Illustrator provides a more fluid multi-layer enabled editing that is great for layouts and resizing block elements and also has the best presets for exporting design meant to be printed.
yes offcourse…it is