George, I'm changing the thread title since this is about Photoshop again, not Macs.
> Photoshop on a decently sized Intel machine > under windows XP is virtually indistinguishable from that same program on a > Mac. True enough. Photoshop is virtually the same. > To recommend Photoshop to a photographer > getting into image processing is a disservice. That novice would be much > better served by Picture Window Pro at one fifth the cost. That's one of the problems of running only a Mac--I've never tried the Windows-only programs. Michael Reichmann of Luminous-Landscape runs both a Mac and a PC. But Picture Window Pro 3.1 (~$90) is virtually the same price as Photoshop Elements 2 (~$100). And I'll even admit that Photoshop is not the ideal image-manipulation program. It is too complicated, and I'll admit that a lot of the features are not directed at photographers. It could be simplified better than it is in Elements. And it even has one thing I consider a flaw--which is that the contrast control is keyed to a middle value. Any B&W printer knows that contrast should be keyed to one end of the scale--in neg-pos printing it's the highlights--so you can get one end right and then change the overall contrast to suit. Most photoshoppers have learned to work around the native contrast control because keying contrast to the middle of the scale doesn't work well for photographs. But who knows, maybe you can fix this in P'shop and I just don't know how. --Mike
