I need a little help from the forum
 

as your all aware; I have only very recently begun to post in online forums. This is a result of a great deal of "wait time" in my loading and unloading schedule. I have decided to upgrade my software to a better word processing program and wonder what the various posters here are happy with. I'm talking a full service suite here. I want something that I can upload photos and embed links and the like with. I have seen some really first class work here; and I would like to get something more capable than the Word that came with Windows 7. I was thinking either Word 2013 or the Adobe suite (publisher/photoshop). Price is no object, but I am familiar with Word already so I think the learning curve would be shallower with Word 2013.

I think your thoughts on Programs are appropriate. I use both the Office 2013 Suite and Adobe Creative Suite and am very happy with them.

I use an older version of CS (version 4) but not much has changed since then. I would be a little careful telling Adobe that price is no object as a full price version runs around 1600 bucks.

Is Adobe difficult to learn? I seem to already have the basics for Word 2013 from using the limited version from Windows. I am considering this purchase as a "long term investment" and don't want to "hit a wall" in capability after spending a great deal of time mastering a program. That's why I was considering both programs.

I have been incrementally learning adobe products for 20 years and I still don't know how to do 80% of the stuff it can do. I don't think hitting a wall is likely.

One of the reason I stick with Adobe is there are great tutorials online. The most capable graphic artists and designers generally use adobe and therefore the most amazing examples are usually in that program. For example I learned yesterday how to sharpen tiny blurry Asian texts. Prior to that I was able to find several Adobe based tutorials on how to make post apocalyptic photos.

For simple stuff just about any image program will work to manipulate the images. You could probably do really complicated stuff as well, but it might take a little more work to convert the tutorials.

MS publisher for book layout. Soda 7 PDF for rearranging or editing another .pdf, Adobe Photoshop (if you must edit, but steep learning curve), MS Word (use the "Wrap text" feature in the page layout tab to write around a picture with screwing up tabs or margins).

When I am being lazy or pressed for time.... Pictures MS PowerPoint.. I can add text, sharpen, +or- contrast or brightness, and crop. The MS Picture Manager to crop that after saving as a .pdf instead of .pptx .

MilSketch for authentic NATO mapping of units and symbols.

Thanks for the input guys. I really needed the help. I bought Publisher and am going to pick up Adobe as soon as I figure out what I really in fact need.

Try Gimp....... it is free, and does most anything that photoshop can do. Then you can decide if you really need 70,000 buttons to make a picture look nice.

I will. After playing with Adobe at a Best Buy store; I'm not sure I want to spend that much time just learning the basic stuff. Thanks for all of the assistance guys.