Alternative to PhotoShop?

I am preparing a family photo album for printing. The printer wants files to be 600 dpi, CMYK, PDFs. I previously prepared some using PhotoShop. The files were so large the printer had to take them into InDesign to reduce the size. I am now trying out a trial copy of iStudio Publisher which does not really have capability to deal with raw images.
Is there another image application (hopefully not as expensive) that can prepare images for printing? I need to be able to prepare 600 dpi, CMYK images to save as jpgs to put in my Publisher documents.
Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome.
Thank you

Peggie wrote:
I am preparing a family photo album for printing. The printer wants files to be 600 dpi, CMYK, PDFs. I previously prepared some using PhotoShop. The files were so large the printer had to take them into InDesign to reduce the size. I am now trying out a trial copy of iStudio Publisher which does not really have capability to deal with raw images.
Is there another image application (hopefully not as expensive) that can prepare images for printing? I need to be able to prepare 600 dpi, CMYK images to save as jpgs to put in my Publisher documents.
Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome.
Thank you
Peggie
When you say "printer' i am guessing that you mean a commercial printer - a person - that wants hi-res output files, such as would be output from an imagesetter, a professional hi-res printer(device), that prints film negatives for each color Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. He would then take those films and create "printing plates" (flexible metal sheets that attach to the printing press) which is inked in the corresponding color, paper fed to the press and comes out the other end with that color printed (if a single press). He/she then would stack up that run - place the  next color plate on the press, etc. If a four-color or six-color press is used, all the plates/inks can be run with a single stack of paper and comes out the other end as the finished product.
It has been my experience that you deliver digital files at or above the target resolution of the output device (imagesetter). A lot of printing companies have their own, but back in the day, there were "service bureaus" that output the films. Any output device (printer) will disregard the "extra" information over its limit to deliver. Outputting hi-res images has been known to take a while in any case.
My advice is to stick with PhotoShop and let the printer deal with the files as he/she sees fit - they are equipped to do so - service-bureau or in-house.
There really is no equal APP in my opinion.
Adobe helped build Apple MacIntosh as a brand with it and other applications.
CCC

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