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- Is Adobe Illustrator a “chopped down” version of Adobe Photoshop? Does Illustrator do anything that Photoshop doesn’t? Does Photoshop do everything that Illustrator does? - MC
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They’re very different. It is well nigh impossible (read much more difficult than it is worth) to create original art in Photoshop which is Illustrator’s purpose. Although they do have much in common these days, your choice depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
How are you planning to use it?
Oh, and have you checked out the Adobe site?
They’re becoming more alike, but their purposes and functions are still vastly different. As OldBroad said, you need to specify what your intended results are.
The quick answer to your questions are No, No, and Not by a long shot.
The basics:
Photoshop
Photoshop is a raster editing and generation program. Raster files are used for photographs, among other things, because each pixel’s location, color, and alpha value (transparency) must be represented individually in the file. File sizes can therefore be very large. Photoshop is used for many purposes, including color correction, retouching, image creation, etc. It is a truly massive program, and definitely on a professional’s plane with a professional’s price tag. If you want to edit images and place them on a website or elsewhere for personal amusement, Photoshop may be a tab overpowered for the job. I’m assuming this is the case because you seem to have limited familiarity with these programs. Macromedia Fireworks is a nice program for about $200, targeted at web professionals. Below that there are any number of consumer-targeted image manipulation programs which I know very little about.
Illustrator
Illustrator is a vector-based graphics and layout program. Vector art is described by coordinates and mathematical symbols instead of pixels. File sizes are much smaller, and it is much easier to create original art. The final result tends to look more “Computery” and uniform and perfect than raster art. But it is impossible to do accurate retouching and color correction of raster images in Illustrator. It does support raster graphics, and there is a “Photoshop Lite” package of filters and such that you can apply to raster images once you import them into Illustrator. Additionally, you can convert Illustrator creations to raster format, and change color formats (CMYK to RGB, for example). Illustrator is a pretty good layout program for this reason, and handles text well.
Please revisit your question and be a little more specific about what your end uses will be. These programs can be a huge investment and there may be other programs on the market which will suit your needs. Checking the Adobe site is a very good idea.
That should be “No, Yes, and Not by a long shot.”
That’ll teach me to be a wiseass.
Photoshop can be used. Therein lies the difference.
::stupid %$#&^#!!! lousy Bezier curve handles!!!
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Another thought… If you’re going to be playing with photographs, etc, from a hobbyist perspective, you might do well to consider Photoshop LE (the “lite” edition). It’s a much smaller investment but still has some great tools.
The confusion over the differences between the two lies in the fact that they were totally different at the beginning, and each has gradually had the other’s functions added, until there’s very little that you can’t do in both. Photoshop is still better with raster images, and Illustrator with vector drawing, but Adobe has done a lot eliminate switching between the two to get particular effects.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
Ah, Ulead PhotoImpact is so far much easier to learn & use & does pretty much all that plus its ready for the web. Photoshop 5.5 doesn’t save stuff for the web very well. I got them both. Photoshop drives me nuts with its complexity over simple tasks.
Photoshop is mostly a photo editing program, Illustrator is used in original graphics, although limited, you can do some original graphics creation in Photoshop.
Personally, sorry OldBroad, but I prefer Paint Shop Pro as it has great abilities that mirror Photoshop and the recent addition of vector graphics makes original graphics creation much easier. And for the reported $100.00 for a new full version, you get great value for your money 
Also, the learning curve for Paint Shop Pro is far less than with Photoshop.
I use: Micrografix Graphics Suite, Photoshop and my trusty tool, Paint Shop Pro.
I have both PhotoShop and PaintShop Pro, and find I use Paint Shop Pro far more often. I need to get out my PhotoShop books to learn more about how to use it. But, it is “the” photo program, so if you want to be a professional, you’ll probably need to get Photoshop. Otherwise - you probably won’t need it.
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- At the college that I am attending, there are courses on both, and students can buy full versions of either at steep discounts. Both are well-known; I haven’t ever used either. I have already seen that you don’t know what cheap programs won’t do until after you install them- they like to imply they have expansive capabilities, when they intentinally lack basic necessary functions. Example #1: many can read many different graphic file formats, but if you modify the image at all, most cannot save the image in the original file format, it can only be saved in that program’s native file format, which requires that program for viewing. I have a couple of cheapie image programs that came free with the scanner or printer; both have a few basic filters and effects but both are guilty of this. - MC
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LOL Yosemite,
One of the reasons I own Photoshop is to tell potential clients I have it, but most of my work is done in PSP…since I do web pages and not much in the print world I am not concerned about the colors.
When I am creating something like might potentially be used for print, then I whip out the Photoshop to I can have the color process correct.
I agree with those above who recommend Paint Shop Pro, but with one caveat: they still want money for the current version. (Version 4.15 has showed up on a few magazine cover CDs lately, free after you buy the mag.)
But if you don’t need even quite so much capability as that, there’s a very nice freeware photo editor out there called Irfanview. Look at the Web site:
http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9227474/ .
Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”