Hi, our company is planning to develop a photobook editor software for the Mac platform. The software will involve extensive graphics and imaging functions. Can anyone advice what is the best development tool? We understand that Xcode, being specifically designed for Mac would be most ideal, but may be lacking in terms of off-the-shelf graphic/imaging libraries. Whereas, using Java development tool, there will be lots of ready made libraries. However, Java may not be that compatible with Mac? Thanks.

Take a look at the Quartz documentation. It is the graphics layer that is built into Mac OS and a subset is built into the iPhone. It already has functions for doing all kinds of drawing and graphics modification. It also has built in support for lots of formats including PDF, JPG, RAW, PNG, reading, generation, etc.

I have never worked with Java in Mac OS but I after working with Quartz for awhile I have yet to find anything it can't do for me so I would reccomend XCode, plus it will run a lot faster if compiled as a native application.