website professionalism

That's for the suite. All he needs is CS for what he's asking for. And yes, if you go for the Suite, you get some serious bang for the buc.

Thats what I thought, I figure if you have the cash there would be no reason not to go for a deal like that, I paid around 1,000 for CS when it come out, and I cant wait to get this one.... just a few more jobs

Studio MX all the way - what a superb package. Fireworks, Flash and Dreamweaver in one box!

And to the original poster, of you, or any of your sibblings are in school k-12 or college, you can get the whole package for around $200 at http://www.academicsuperstore.com

That was the only way I could afford professional software. Bought 90% of my software my freshman year of college.

Did I miss something????

I thought we were talking about graphics and Photoshop CS

Ok, Grant, back to your original question. As long as you have some sort of imaging software you can create a professional looking website. The professional feel of your website is based on the layout and the type of graphics you are producing. Software is not concerned in this issue. You could easily produce a crappy looking site with the most expensive software and vise versa. A lot of time people confuse quanity with quality. It's like make-up, remember, "Sometimes less is more." Your logo along with one or two graphic images, stregically placed can go a long way. Site colors and fonts can make a big difference as well. Your best bet is trial and error, like I do. The newest version of my site, 10.0, will be up soon. Although my site will probrably not fall into the corporate image catagory you are aspiring for but I think it will serve as a good example of a professional layout.

I love Adobe programs (I use Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere, and Sound Editor), so I would definitely recommend Photoshop as the primary graphics program. It'll do almost anything you want it to, in terms of creating professional graphics.
As was mentioned earlier, it's not just about knowing what each button does, but about how to use those buttons.

And don't be fooled by all the praise for Photoshop. You can make a professional site even without a whole lot of image-editting. All you need is a nice, simple image, matching CSS, and a clean layout. For nice images, I recommend stock photography from http://sxc.hu. You can just take one of those, crop it to the size you want, work a layout around it, and it'll probably look really good.

CSS is definitely key though, in my opinion, especially if you have few graphics.