Photoshop vs. GIMP Shop vs. Paint.NET?

[Godly Paladin]

Any opinions from those who know what I'm talking about?

[Kaligraphic]

Okay, Photoshop is the best of the three, professional quality and faster than the GIMP. The GIMP is second, and is basically an open source attempt at Photoshop.

Paint.NET was intended to be what MS Paint should have been, and does not aspire to the heights of image editing that can be achieved with Photoshop or the GIMP.

[Ashley]

I much prefer Photoshop to anything else (except maybe Illustrator), but I was trained in Photoshop so I'm most comfortable with it.

However, given that most people can't afford Photoshop (there are student versions out there, though), GIMP is a reasonable replacement.

[Kawaiikneko]

Photoshop... I had PS first (*whisper*Illegally*whisper*) and then felt guilty about stealing $600 something worth of software... <.< So I deleted it and tried to switch to GIMP. I could never really get used to it, honestly. I'm sure it would have been fine if I hadn't been using PS for awhile but it was really hard to take the step down. Now I have Photoshop again, legally, by way of Christmas present! X3 woo~

[Fiore teh Duck]

I much prefer Photoshop as well...for me its just like the granddaddy of all image softwares

[Bobtheduck]

Sorry to say, GIMP is too glitchy and counterintuitive... But it's awesome for the budget image editor if you can get used to all its quirks... I definitely prefer Photoshop, but you get what you pay for. (I have the production suite legally, through school)

After reading about CS3, I'm thinking I maybe should have waited on all that... CS3 is so drastically improved over CS2 and Production suite...

A whole new program for nothing but keying!!! *gasps* Man, that would be really useful... I can never get the hang of keying on After Effects... This program has special tools to help with bad lighting and hair... *drool*

Oh, sorry, this was about Photoshop not the other Adobe stuff... Photoshop CS3 improvements probably don't mean much, except for the improved background selector... Which looks absolutely awesome...

Yeah... Photoshop blows everything else away, easy...

[mechana2015]

Photoshop is also the industry standard for image editing, and the others are, honestly, usually laughed out of schools and professional work environments. Gimp has a counterintuitive interface to my experience (though a new GUI is supposedly coming out soon), and well, I think Kali covered point.net well.

[ChristianKitsune]

I looove Photoshop...but sadly all i have is Photoshop Elements 3.0... it's better than nothing, but I wish I had the original...-_- I wish I had CS or CS2

I am not picky though! ^_^