Adobe Photoshop CS3

Adobe Photoshop is a program created in order to allow users to edit images and graphics professionally.  Adobe Photoshop as one of the most popular software programs for this use and is also one of the most expensive.  Adobe Photoshop version CS3 is actually not even the newest version.  Adobe Systems is currently working on for shop versions CS5, although this is yet to be released.  The most recent version that has been released is a Adobe Photoshop CS4.  I personally have used both CS4 and CS3 at my local university in the library computers, and have not noticed much of a difference between the two versions.  Therefore unless you are a professional, a business or going to need the new features found in version CS4, I would recommend getting version CS3 if you can do so at a discount.
Adobe Photoshop can be used for variety of different purposes.  I personally use Adobe Photoshop for editing images that I may use when I do web design work.  Some examples of some simple tasks that unable to perform with Adobe Photoshop include cropping certain aspects out of an image and placing them in another image, gray scaling images, creating banners and logos, editing certain aspects at a photo completely and much more.  Although certain for shop experts can do much more using the software this is primarily what I use it for.  Of course, I've also used Photoshop in order to convert images from one format to another.  I've taken Photoshop classes at my university, and have learned much about the basic functions and features of Adobe Photoshop and including the history of the software.
Adobe Photoshop also allows users to use their same format files across all the different Adobe platform software.  This means it you can use Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and many other Adobe products with each other in sync, which can really help when working a project when you need to utilize different software to get things done.
In the latest versions of Photoshop, in both CS3 and CS4 they have added some new features. Some of these new features include the ability to work with and be compatible with many more different types of files, including even PDFs, or Portable Document Format. It also allows users to work with 3-D animation shapes and models, which is very cool to witness and try out.
Overall, obviously Adobe Photoshop is very impressive, although very expensive. This software is good for people who need it, but if you're just looking to take the red eye out of someone's picture, or simple photo editing, there are much better, and cheaper or even free alternatives. Google's Picasa does a lot of what Photoshop can do, for free.