VERDICT: Plenty of core new power for the digital camera user – but Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is still playing catch-up.

Over its long history Paint Shop Pro has built up a great deal of bitmap editing power, but it has also come to seem dated and increasingly out of tune with the times...

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VERDICT: A new interface, smart albums, guided editing and photo merging but comparatively little to boost core efficiency.

Organizing and enhancing thousands of digital photographs is a time-consuming task and the digital camera owner needs dedicated help to make the process as productive and enjoyable as possible...

Tom Arah shows you the best way to bring some texture into your design work.

Long-term readers will know that I am a big fan and keen advocate of the use of seamless bitmap textures. Such textures play an essential role in the production of 3D work, as we saw again last month, but they can also prove just as useful within 2D bitmap and vector environments...

VERDICT: Piranesi gets the major overhaul of interface and tools that its extraordinary creative power deserves.

Piranesi stands out from all other bitmap editors because it is able to handle material and depth information as well as colour; it might sound a relatively small difference but it unleashes a massive amount of 3D painting power...

VERDICT: Bizarrely antiquated and underpowered creative asset management.

To give a general boost to its professional design credentials and in particular to its Expression Studio suite, Microsoft decided that it needed an application for managing media assets and so bought up iView MediaPro 3...

Microsoft pulls off an extraordinary feat reinventing desktop application design, but it's only the taste of things to come regarding the web.

For years now there has been talk of Microsoft’s determination to move into the design software territory normally associated with Adobe. Now, with the launch of the Expression Studio suite, the talk is over – so how does it shape up?

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VERDICT: Photoshop moves beyond photo editing to conquer completely new territory.

My first reaction to the news that a new enhanced version of Photoshop was being introduced was deeply cynical...

VERDICT: Should be central to the CS3 suite but Bridge CS3 is comparatively disappointing.

The Bridge application was introduced in the previous CS2 release and, as its name suggests, is designed to integrate the different members of the CS3 suite by acting as a central media management hub.

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VERDICT: Non destructive image processing and creative filters lead the feature list in a comprehensive upgrade to the market leader.

Photoshop entirely dominates the world of professional photo-editing which makes it the must-have tool for designers and gives it a central role as the flagship for Adobe’s new CS3 releases...

With no real competition Adobe could have taken its foot off the pedal, but this latest version again pushes forwards on all fronts.

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VERDICT: Powerful and award-winning new versions of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator – and now Acrobat 8 Professional too.

So here they are – the new professional platforms for both print and web design have arrived...