In PS7 I have a LOT of filters and actions, most of which I rarely use. Ones I do use frequently are Neat Image (sparingly), Fred Miranda's Stair Interpolation Pro (fantastic), Feivel's Gothic Glow (often as an overlay that's faded to 20-30%, where I run my own home-brew version of it when I need it to be DPC-legal), Filtermeister's ConvoLine for sharpening, a new action called Smart Sharpener which seems very promising, Xero's Mystifier, and some others I forget now.
I run IrfanView as a desktop viewer and sorter.
I organize with PSP Photo Album Deluxe.
I use Macromedia Dreamweaver for web design.
I use Adobe Acrobat a lot for my work, to deliver printable files to the press.
I have a nifty utility called jpeg cruncher pro that lets me easily batch process entire folders of images in the background, for the web.
Photoshop CS - w/plugins galore, though I use probably 6 or 7
Image Ready - depending on what I am working on
PSP 7 & 8 - with plugins galore - PSP8 does some things better than PS for me.
IrfanView - to make icons mostly
ImagesPlus
DSLRFocus
EditPadPro - for handwriting all sorts of different code
Neat Image - stand alone and plugin
Noise Ninja2 - stand alone and plugin (I like Neat Image better)
Color Contrast Analyser (for accessibility issues)
Adobe Atmosphere
Poser5
UVMapperPro
Vue4
Terragen
World Machine
and a whole slew of other programs... :-)
I just tried to install Digital Photo Pro 1.5 that came with my camera. It says Win XP or Mac needed. I have 98 at home. It installed and would open images, particularly the raw from the camera, but after a few seconds the image would focus and then only a stripe would remain in the viewer window. The adjustment window stayed open and functional. But the image is so small you cannot make a realistic judgment on what you are doing to the image.
I also just installed Photoshop Elements 2. Already I do not like it and probably will not use it again. Perhaps this is due to faithful long time use of another product.
I think I've tried just about everything on the market, including GIMP, Paint.net, etc., etc.. I have PSP9, PhotoImpact 10, Elements 2.0. It got real confusing and I ended up a "master of none". (TIP: Pick a program, any program, but stay with it and learn it!)
I gave up. This is what I use:
PSCS2 with Focus Magic and Neat Image plugins.
Elements 3.0 with the same plugins for quickie jobs.
Went cold turkey- took all the other programs I had off the HD. I've never had PS before, and it's a learning experience, but the results I'm getting are worth it.
I'm using Photo Shop Elements 3 with Scott Kirby's book - The Photoshop Elements 3 Book for digital photographers which helps me with many tricks. The book has made a huge difference in learning the program. I also use Nikon Capture 4.0.
Photoshop CS2
Nikon Capture
Paint Shop Pro 7 for quick jobs (PSP8 and PSP9 suck; PS is way better in heavy class while PSP7 is light enough to be excellent for quickies)
I do all my graphics work with The GIMP (version 2.2 currently) since all my workstations are unix/linux. I've found this program does all and more than what I need at this time. Generally I can read through a Photoshop tutorial and easily translate the steps to GIMP, though there are differences.
