In your opinion and why, what's the greatest video/photo editing software out ?

video: final cut pro
it’s the industry standard for a reason. if you’re looking to find a video editing suite, i strongly recommend you make this your first stop. you could potentially look into the autodesk suite depending on the company you work with, but FCP is a very safe and solid package to be proficient with.

photo: photoshop
because it’s user-friendly and provides you with an incredible amount of flexibility.

Favorite photo editing is Lightroom 2. It’s help me so much more than Photoshop and it saves me time.

And video I don’t know.

There is nothing that comes close to Adobe’s CS4 suite, let alone surpasses it.

They’re two different softwares. You don’t want one that does both things, it’ll suck.

Photo editing is Photoshop, hands down. Nothing comes close. It is the standard. Sure you can use other programs, but Photoshop does it better, faster.

For video editing I enjoyed Adobe’s Premiere Pro. It’s a solid editor, and the integration with the sound editing program Audition is very handy when editing a movie. I haven’t used Final Cut Pro, but Premiere was great enough to produce my movie completely, so I was satisfied.

Basically, I love using Adobe’s stuff. It just works well, it’s well documented, widely available, etc.

@dynamicduo good point, Premiere is a very decent editor, but only if you’re looking at personal use. i dont recommend it if you’re looking for a job in a production house.

Can someone say what those programs can do? WHY do you think they’re the best?

@SirBailey Can someone say what those programs can do?

No, not really. The CS4 suite does so much that it would take several thousand words to describe it all. Log onto Adobe’s site and spend a few hours going through the guides and info files. Basically, it does it all.

@DarkScribe is right, and you could apply that to FCP as well. very simply though, Photoshop makes Playdoh of your images, and FCP gives you a lot of freedom and speed in editing your video footage. You could also check out Adobe After Effects which is like Photoshop for footage.

is it sad if these software suites give me an erection?

Have to agree with everyone here, the Adobe products rule. I use Photoshop CS3 right now and wouldn’t give it up for the world. LOVE IT!

Video: Final Cut Pro

Because Steve says so (along with Hollywood)

Photo: Photoshop

@SirBailey No one could say what they do completely. They each have hundreds of functions with thousands of parameters, and sometimes you can use a function to get a different result than the programmers really meant it for. Very broadly speaking, with the CS2/3/4 suite, you can do anything and everything you see in graphics and web design and multimedia in general minus raw 3D animation (although CS4 does have this integrated more, so that you can import a 3D model into Photoshop and use it in a promo shot with ease. The programs for this are Maya, 3DS Max, or Blender).

I agree with the Photoshop stuff, but for an actual photographer where time is money (excuse the phrase) Lightroom is a lot better, faster, and produces great images. Give it a shot if you do a lot of photo editing. The new brushes are amazing.

@willbrawn – I have read that photographers prefer Lightroom to photoshop because it is more in tune to the types of adjustments they are likely to need to make.

I think there is a difference between photo editing, where I think a person mainly works with the image they shot, and image editing where they introduce anything from vector art to text, to other pictures to texture masks to 3d elements to hand drawn elements.

I would go with Photoshop and FinalCut for pro or Premier. I have CS4 and love it.

I have used Photoshop from version 2, Fireworks from MX, Corel Draw a long time ago, GIMP on linux, and a number of cheaper small apps. Photoshop is hands down the best for image editing. The tools for color balancing and correcting are not matched. It’s algorithms for image resizing and manipulation are superior to everything else I’ve used. To a trained eye the differences are significant… to an untrained eye it may not be noticeable.

It sounds like though Lightroom 2 may be pretty good. I will give it a try and compare. But if photographers think it does a god job maintaining the fidelity of an image and gives great controls for color then it may be worth looking at as a photoshop replacement.

@jumpo7 – I would be interested in your take on that. I don’t know the two to the algorithmic level your talking about. I know some of the differences had to do with what was more readily accessible to photographers in Lightroom vs Photoshop. Not that Photoshop couldn’t do it but how easy was it.

@willbrawn but for an actual photographer where time is money (excuse the phrase) Lightroom is a lot better, faster, and produces great images.

As a person who works daily editing images and overseeing graphic designers, I’ll disagree. Photoshop with Bridge can’t be beaten for editing. Lightroom is a compromise by comparison, great if don’t have CS4. I feel that Lightroom is more for photographers who don’t want to buy the full Adobe Premium suite with all its bells and whistles. It is more of a database management system than an editing system. More of a workflow aid. Even Adobe promotes it that way. I have it, have had since the first Mac only release, but I never use it. I can’t recall the last time it was opened.

I would certainly recommend it for a Photographer who doesn’t have the need for a full suite, but if they seriously want manipulate images rather than handle images, go the full Professional Suite.

Ok so I checked out Lightroom 2 and it is very nice for a photo editor up to a certain level. That level will probably meet the need of a majority of users. It has the power of Photoshop’s color tools and image resizing.

It does not have the full set of tools found in Photoshop. So if you need to add text or compose multiple images in a montage or apply certain effects or masks then it is not going to be sufficient. I would compare Lightroom 2 to iPhoto or Picasa and would say it is the best of those type of apps. You can not easily, if at all, create graphics that may include images in these apps. They are for creating slide shows, photobooks, web galleries or prepping photos to go into a page layout program.

For creating advanced images nothing beats Photoshop. Most users do not need to create such advanced images. For adding still images to a video you may not need the power of Photoshop… but if you are a creative professional, it’s tough to do without Photoshop.