Image editor?

Does anyone have any suggestions to a good image editor? One that can make many cool advanced features easy? like 3d and stuff?

Well there is photoshop, fireworks, illustrator, image ready, Maya........

How much are you looking to spend, and exactly what do you mean easily?

Two words, Adobe Photoshop - with enough training and experience with the program - you'll be able to produce pretty much any kind of image manipulation desired.

Well it would depend on if this person is looking to create 3D or just plain vector/2D images. So which is it thmundal?

I have worked with Photoshop, and I know what this program can do. But as 613flavah says, I want to create 3D effected images, or animations in a easy way...

For 3D effects, the only ones I'm familiar with are Poser & Bryce. I know that Maya also is for 3D animation. You will have to do some research on which one is best suited for you and also if they offer a trial version on their websites b/c they come quite pricey.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Poser is the "user friendly" of the 3 I mentioned. It's the easiest to master and use.

I recommend 3ds max.

Although I don't think any 3d image application is very easy to just fall into, this one seemed to me to be very comfortable, and tons of tutorials for it on the web. The animation features of 3ds are very versitile, and there are always many plugins available both free and commercial.

I have heard 'maya' is top notch, and i think this program is plenty more expensive.

My suggestion to you is to do some research first because any of these programs are very pricey and you definately don't want to buy an expensive set of new coffee coasters.

To get you more familliar with 3d modeling try this great free open source program: http://www.blender3d.org

This app does alot of what the commercial apps do, but the interface is a little tricky to get used too. Anyway would be a good start before you drop a few grand on a program

Thanks guys!

MAya does offer a free version but it is only for learning how to use the software and not for comercial use. I believe it adds some sort of code to the output to distinguish itself as a learning tool and the commercial product does the same. The base version of the commercial app is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000 U.S. Poser is good but rather rudimentary and i have played with 3d max it was a good learning tool for basic understanding of 3d design. But there isnt really any 'easy' 3d software until it is mastered. And in my experience the better the software the easier it is to use, maybe not master, but use.

What I mean is, with 3D max it was rather easy to set up a 3d scene and render, however it was not very complex or detailed. The details were a little more tricky to get to work properly, at least the effect I was trying to pull off anyway. But with the more advanced software which may not be as easy to just jump in and go the details are automatically available with some tweeking necessary.

Example : rotating ball

in 3d max you could create a rotating ball rather easily, but to include reflections, surface maping etc wasnt necesarrily an easy task.

With Maya, LightWave, other high end software, it might not be as easy to just jump in and create a rotating ball, but once that is done, the reflections, surface mapping, shading are all there, pre programmed and ready to go. But like I said this is just my experience I may have just missed the boat on the lower end software............

i'm using maya and i love it...ez to use, and very flexible...FYI: they used it extensively on spiderman2...but you dont have to be an expert to use it.

Photoshop is great... I can sell you it..

my advice:
for 2D raster, photoshop is the best
for 2D vecter, either Illustrator or Corel Draw will do
for 3D, 3D Max or Maya (Recently I heard about a new software called "zBrush", I watched one of its video tutorial and it's great! Easy but rocks~ more details can be found here: http://pixologic.com/home/home.shtml)

I used mostly photoshop, and it'll be great if you can find some 3rd party plug-ins for it.

en, if you just need some simple software for simple purposes, I recommend picasa to you, it is totally free (check here for details and download http://www.picasa.com).

I'm pretty much with Tigerfish...

2D Raster, Photoshop or GIMP
2D Vector, Illustrator
3D Maya, MotionBuilder

Some other free 3D Software you could check out..

Wings3D, Blender, Terragen.