The competition is really between Aperture and Lightroom. These programs are designed to keep track of your photos, sort through them, select them, and simple modifications. No matter which you buy you’ll want Photoshop for hardcore photo editing. And for many folks the Adobe Bridge product that comes with Photoshop is more than adequate.

To be fair, Photoshop and Aperture are very different types of programs, so it really depends what you want to do with your photos. Aperture is very good at organizing your photos, comparing them and making adjustments to your RAW images. Photoshop, on the other hand, is a top-to-bottom editing package that allows you to turn the images completely inside-out if you like…but it doesn’t have the same level of light-table-esque capabilities of Aperture. (That’s about to change with the release of Photoshop CS3, which adds many of the capabilities found in Aperture.) The difference between the two is reflected in the price: while you can get the more basic Aperture for $299, a full version of Photoshop can cost $599 and up…but if you’re planning to do a lot of editing, filtering and touch-ups, it may be worth the added expense.