Masterful software that manipulates photos and vector graphics is bread and butter for digital designers. The Adobe brand is so dominant that in some circles, Photoshop has become a verb. But Adobe is by no means the only game in town for creative pros. If you're scrounging pennies for high-end graphics software, then consider the stellar CorelDraw Graphics Suite 12.0, which costs a fraction of the price of the $899 Adobe Creative Suite 2.0. You might even wonder if Corel's $399 price is a typo. Our reviewers gave excellent marks to both software bundles, yet the CorelDraw suite shone brightly enough to merit CNET's Editors' Choice award.

Corel's Draw and Photo-Paint provide features and quality that are similar to those of Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop. The interfaces of all of these apps provide myriad windows and menus for fine-tuning your projects. CorelDraw also lets you customize the appearance of the tools on your screen--even to mimic the look of Photoshop--and its documents integrate with Photoshop, handy if your clients use Adobe files.

In addition to its photo touch-up and illustration programs, the Corel suite also includes its RAVE app for making animations, while the Adobe suite comes with InDesign print page-layout software. The Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 boasts integration across its package so that you can play with, say, a Photoshop file from Illustrator. To add Web page layout to the mix, the $1,199 Adobe Creative Suite 2.0 Premium includes GoLive and Acrobat software.