The primary software needed by professional designers are those with the power and flexibility required to produce a variety of documents, provide strong typographic controls, produce output suitable for commercial printing, and have industry-wide acceptance. The three major categories of professional desktop publishing software are page layout, illustration, and photo editing.
Page Layout
Professional page layout software must produce output in industry standard formats, have extensive typographic control and graphics handling. This software can usually be further expanded with specialized plug-ins, should work well with the industry standard graphics programs, and import a wide variety of other file types. Expect to pay in the range of $500-$1000US for these tools.
Illustration
Illustration or drawing programs produce scalable vector artwork. For professional use and commercial printing, scalable EPS graphics are the format of choice and import easily into most major page layout programs. Advanced illustration software can also do double-duty as a page layout application. Expect to pay $200-$550US for advanced illustration capabilities.
Photo Editors
A photo editor or image editor is the tool you need for working with photographs and bitmap graphics. In addition to strong photo-editing features it should easily import and export common graphics formats including TIFF, GIF, JPG, and EPS. For professional design work, Photoshop and Photo-Paint are the industry standards. Expect to pay $200-$650US for advanced photo editing capabilities.
