Ask any graphic designer connected with the Internet to select their graphic design software package of choice? And I would estimate that the vast majority would have Adobe Photoshop 6 at the very top of their list.

Adobe Photoshop 6 is the latest release of this extremely popular image editing software, with the release of Photoshop 6 adobe has once again developed a product that is far superior to the previous Photoshop 5.5 version and also to its competitors.

Photoshop 6 redefines desktop image editing with integrated vector-drawing support that extends your creative range. With this support, you can incorporate editable vector shapes and text into your images, and then output these resolution-independent graphics and text with your image data; you can produce Adobe PDF files for high-end printing or for output directly to a Postscript printer. Photoshop 6 also opens up new artistic options with content layers, layer styles, warping controls, and other creativity-inspiring features.

Adobe Photoshop 6 expands its Web toolkit to provide more timesaving, production-orientated features, including Adobe ImageReady 3 for advanced Web-production tasks. From offering slicing tools directly to introducing efficient rollover styles in ImageReady, Photoshop 6 fine-tunes the toolkit considered essential by many Web designers worldwide.

My personal preference is to utilise Adobe Photoshop 6 with Macromedia Fireworks instead of ImageReady, however as ImageReady is packaged with Photoshop 6 this is an additional expense that many organization cannot really justify. Why do I prefer Macromedia Fireworks to Adobe ImageReady, the main reason if I'm completely honest is the learning curve, I have used Photoshop and Fireworks for numerous years and have simply never really taken the time to get to grips with ImageReady. The slice tool in my opinion is also easier to use in Macromedia Fireworks than Adobe ImageReady. and with time always of the essence around here that is an extremely important consideration.

Getting back to Photoshop 6, which is the best image editing program in existence in my opinion and one that I certainly can never foresee being without.

As the world-standard image-editing solution, Adobe Photoshop is renowned for its power and breadth. One challenge it faces though is how to make this power more accessible to everyone. Photoshop 6 introduces hundreds of subtle enhancements - from on-canvas text entry to an intuitive new context-sensitive tool options bar - that makes it easier for you to get to work quickly and use its features more fully. No matter how long you've been using Photoshop 6, for ten days or ten years, you'll appreciate the freedom to focus on being your best.

Photoshop 6 is in my opinion the best desktop image editing software that you can buy, it is not perfect and the learning curve is still remarkably steep. But once you have mastered Adobe Photoshop 6 you will wonder how you ever managed before, it really is that good and I would urge everyone to download a trail copy.