The only remotely negative thing I can say about Photoshop 7 is, that if you're totally new to Photoshop, completely learning to use all of its myriad features effectively will be a very daunting task (to say the least). But, that could also be construed as a good thing about Photoshop. It's loaded with a plethora of very useful, very advanced features that other competitive products can't even touch.

However, once you get a basic understanding of Photoshop's layers and basic tools, you can immediately get to work creatively modifying and enhancing your digital photos and doing graphic design. If you ARE new to Photoshop, I do recommend purchasing 3rd party training materials to gain an understanding of the features Photoshop has to offer.

Chances are, if you're considering forking out the considerable cost for this product, than you probably have at least intermediate experience with Photoshop already. The new features of Photoshop 7 are extremely useful. There are new tools for photo enhancements (such as the unbelievable healing brush) as well as illustrating tools that finally turn Photoshop (in my opinion) to a one-stop graphic design studio.

This comes with a fantastic training CD that takes you through the new features. It covers the new customizable paint brushes (which will blow your mind), the (soon-to-be my favorite tool) healing brush, the new file browser and all sorts of other things. This CD was so good, in fact, that I'm considering buying the whole training series for Photoshop.

There is a reason Adobe Photoshop is the omnipresent software installed on every serious graphic designer's computer. It's simply the best, and everything else is a cheap knockoff. True, some cheaper packages do a reasonable job of imitating some of Photoshop's features-but none of them do as good of a job. Photoshop 7 just brings even more revolutionary, well-implemented features to the table, and puts more distance between itself and the wannabes. The bottom line is that if you're looking for the best photo editing software coupled with incredible graphic design tools, you've found it.