Originally posted by: Karyudo
I'll bet you professionals use Illustrator. Using Photoshop for that much text and other vector based stuff? I doubt it. Photoshop's good for amateur stuff, I suppose, but nothing beats a good vector graphics package.

For all the text and layout they'd most likely be using InDesign or Quark like the rest of the print professionals. Basically, what Karyudo and I are saying is that you don't only work in one program, but several. Artwork in Photoshop, logos and icons in Illustrator and layout placement, text and readying for press in InDesign. Oh, and departmental proofing in Acrobat.

If you really are keen on all this, then luckily the Academic price of all these programs is about the same as two separate. The whole Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium is US$380 academic or $1,299 commercial. Photoshop by itself is $280 academic or $599 commercial. You can get a stripped down version called Photoshop Elements for $140 (this includes a video editor too).

As I mentioned earlier, The GIMP is totally free. It does all the general stuff fine, just missing some advance features that you'd likely never use for DVD covers. There's a couple of free Illustrator alternatives too, calamari mentioned Inkscape and I remember another, but can't remember the name (Google showed me no love either, wouldn't be surprised if it was Inkscape's previous name). There really is no reason to pirate software, well, unless you want to look like a jerk, then it works well.