When comparing Photoshop vs Bitwig Studio, the Slant community recommends Bitwig Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs with session view?” Bitwig Studio is ranked 1st while Photoshop is ranked 9th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Industry standard
Photoshop is used by professionals everywhere in a wide variety of fields including photography, graphic design and digital art. It is the de facto standard for image manipulation. If you've seen a magazine ad featuring a model, you've probably seen the effects of Photoshop. You won't be alone when using Photoshop.
Pro Trove of plugins that extend functionality are available
A wide variety of plugins that add new effects, improve existing functionality and simplify workflow are available.
Pro Lots of tutorials
There's a huge number of both free and paid tutorials available online. Websites like Lynda.com offer premium high-quality, in-depth tutorials, but there are plenty of free alternatives to be found on YouTube, blogs and specialized sites on the Internet.
Pro A cheaper, standalone version called Photoshop Elements is available
A stripped down version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Elements can be bought as a standalone application for $100.
Pro Includes powerful content-aware tools
Photoshop includes content-aware tools such as content-aware fill that can fill in a select area based on what surrounds it.
Pro Packs a staggering amount of functionality
Photoshop is the most fully featured image editing software available today allowing you to perform highly advanced image manipulation.
It has tools for RAW image adjustments, lens correction, retouching, image stitching, HDR, fixing framing. It supports most professional color modes and file formats. It includes extensive lists of filters, styles, effects, fonts as well as tools for painting, sketching and typography work. It understands both raster and vector graphics. It even includes tools for video editing, working with 3D objects and support for 3D printing.
Pro Integrates with Creative Cloud
You can save all projects directly to the Creative Cloud allowing you to access them from any device and with any relevant Adobe software.
Pro Creative Cloud Photography subscription includes Lightroom
Lightroom is another image editing software from Adobe that's specifically designed for photo editing and managing of large quantities of digital images.
Pro Mobile companion apps available
There's a free mobile app available for iOS, Android & Windows Phone.
Pro Great modulation system
Pro Supports expressive MIDI - MPE
Makes use of the Seaboard, Linnstrument, Continuum and other modern expressive controllers.
Pro Easy automation
The easiest DAW to do automation in. All you have to do is press record and start moving knobs, and that's it.
Pro Dual sequencer
The ability to run two sequencers at the same time, while swapping out sounds gives you great flexibility to complete a song.
Pro Touch screen support
This software has big, responsive, easy-to-handle controls that work really well on a touchscreen. Additionally, it has a tablet mode that re-organizes the UI to make it much simpler and perfect for smaller screen devices. This is both a mobile touchscreen app and a DAW at the same time! It even has a built-in keyboard/drumpad.
Pro Open multiple projects
Pro Highly modular
Pro Cross platform and highly compatible
The Bitwig DAW runs on Mac, PC, and, Linux. This DAW also has the distinction of being one of the only DAWs that can run 32 bit and 64 bit plugins at the same time.
Pro Ableton link support
Pro Supports multiple midi instruments on one track
Being able to add multiple midi instruments on the same track is a nice feature. It allows for much easier setup for VSTs like Cthulhu. It's also nice to be able to have multiple instruments setup that can be toggled.
Pro Very intuitive/user-friendly
Pro Very good integration with Eurorack
Pro Many high quality free sound packs
Pro Supports sf2 samples out of the box
There is an instrument called Sampler which can correctly load sf2 instruments as a multisample preserving all individual sub sample settings and zoning. You do NOT need a VST to play soundfonts and you don't need to extract the sf2 samples! This is unique among all popular DAWs.
Pro Create custom Synths/FX in the Grid
Create any style synth, wavetable, fm, analog, and fx in the grid.
Pro Very powerful voice stacking mechanism
Pro Very active development
Pro Plugin crash protection
Plugins can be sandboxed.
Pro Powerful devices/presets/sample browser
Pro You can write your own controller support in Java
Pro State of the art time stretching
Pro Very efficient preset browser
Cons
Con Expensive
The standalone version of Photoshop costs $19.99/month, though it can be leased as part of the Creative Cloud Photography bundle that includes Lightroom for $9.99/month.
Con Latest versions of Photoshop are subscription-only
While you can still buy CS6 from 2012 without needing a subscription by contacting Adobe support or the cut-down Photoshop Elements, any full-version version of Photoshop past CS6 requires a subscription.
Con Learning it can take some time
While you can relatively quickly learn how to perform a few basic image editing tasks, understanding Photoshop's ins and outs can be difficult. It's partially due to the sheer amount of functionality that Photoshop packs (and understanding that some of the advanced functionality can take a while to understand on its own), and partially due to it being aimed at professionals with little hand-holding for novice users.
Con Very slow
It needs a very power CPU and GPU and many GBs of RAM and still it is so slow.
Con Stop paying, it vaporises
With Adobes adaptation of the "subscription world" PhotoShop too is available as subscription software only. This means it will never become yours. And if you stop paying, you won't have any PhotoShop any more. Whether you are OK with that or not, it also means that PhotoShop for a large part becomes software for those "who can afford it". Or "push cost to others". Like customers of professionals. Which is also a way to become an "industry standard".
Con Affinity Photo is just as good at a fraciton of the price
Switching from Photoshop to Affinity Photo and it's hard to notice the difference quality of a professional's work. They say that PS is the industry standard, but so very few pros that tried Affinity Photo ever look back.
Con Not good enough to be so expensive
Probably the only big advantage Photoshop has over the other free software is the adjustment layers. But still too expensive for just one feature.
Con Batch editing of images is not straightforward
Photoshop is designed to work extensively on one image at a time and while batch editing support exists, it's not that intuitive to use.
Con Asset management capabilities are lacking
In Photoshop asset management is done through a separate program called Bridge. As Bridge is supposed to be a file management tool for not just Photoshop's files, but for files generated by all of Adobe's applications it covers a breadth of capabilities, but not depth.
Con No native video playback monitoring
Doesn't have video playback monitoring for film / Tv and Gaming video audio.
But can use MTC with 3rd Party Video Monitors or other DAW with video monitor capabilities.
Con Unreliable for professional production
Full of random bugs. Bad performance when using many tracks.
Con Very bad performance when working with several tracks
Con Pricey
Pricey in comparison with other major DAWs.
Con Not open source
Con No LV2
Has no support for LV2 plugins.
Con UI gets frozen, VSTs crash all the time
Very frustrating to work with.
Con Unpredictable behaviour when stacking many building blocks (e.g. selectors, layers)
There is too much focus on adding new features. Instead, it would be better to fix the vast amount of bugs that cause the software to glitch and crash repeatedly.
Con No Dolby Atmos / surround
Con Very bad marketing team
Very recently Bitwig changed the agreement for updates (one year subscription) without any communication prior doing that. Now they only include bug fixes and workflow improvements into one year subscription plan. Everything else like new instruments and effects and sound libraries will be sold as add on.