More functionality than photoshop CS4 at a fraction of the price?

[ravells]

It's arrived and I've been playing with it for an hour and I must say, I'm pretty impressed.

I'll skip the bits about photography and go to mapping:

Brushes:

Has pencil and brush options
The brush edit menu is much simpler than PS's (see image) but the level of options is easily good enough for mapping. You can make your own brushtips too.

Layers:
The bits which look and feel exactly like PS
Has layer masks, quick masks and making masks from vector selection.
has channels
has layer adjustments
has blending modes
Has an instant 'depth map' layer button which I think could be very useful for mapping - it's basically a bevel and emboss layerstyle - good for mountains. It's like having a 'render lighting effects' in the fly where the bump map is like a layer mask or vector mask.

Layerstyles are a bit different (see second image for menu) but it supports all the things I have in CS2 including pattern fills. It doesn't quite have the high end stuff that PS has, for example bevel/emboss options don't have chisel hard / chisel soft (although there is a softness slider) and can't make your own bevel curve map.

For the price though I think that for mapmaking and drawing and photography this beats the spots off Adobe Elements in terms of features. Compared to CS2 it has everything that CS2 has except for the 'top end' tweaks and sliders for brushes and layerstyles.

I think what I'll try to do is to make a map using it and see where that gets me but so far...I'm very, very impressed.

Edit: big downside - not many keyboard shortcuts supported.