What Photoshop version is the best for drawing and coloring?

[Warren]

I am possibly gonna be able to get a photoshop program for my art. But I'd like to know which is the best, and cheapest, and is the best for drawing and coloring. You know with the smudge, burn, blur, and so on tools, and the different brushes.

What would you think?

[Mi1ler]

From Photoshop CS to CS4, there haven't been any real improvements or innovations in terms of straight drawing in photoshop. Any of CS versions will work the same. The older the version, the cheaper it gets.

[Alyson]

Photoshop is a fairly expensive professional product that, as the title indicates, is strongly oriented toward photo image manipulation.
For drawing and coloring, you can find much cheaper programs that do a good job (I think the Paint Shop Pro I use has many choices that I don't use yet) and there are some programs on the market recently that seem to me to be far more painterly in their behavior including being able use quick sketches to do paint area edge control and later erasing of the sketch. Here is an article on the topic <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_painting">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_painting</a><!-- m -->

[Tuttle]

If drawing and coloring is all you expect to do, then a copy of Photoshop Elements will do that and much, much more. The advantage is that even the most recent version retails for less than $100 and legal, obsolete versions are available, online, for much less.

WAY too many people spend big bucks on full version Photoshop apps and never come close to using them to their full potential. It's like spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a high end sports car and using it to go fetch groceries.

Shop around and find a version of Adobe Photoshop Elements. I'll bet you won't be disappointed.