I'm taking Photoshop's side in this one. I use it extensively every day at work, and I have to say that its bloody marvellous - except when it comes to batch processing, which is not its greatest talent.
I reckon ArtEffect would be a better program to compare directly against Photoshop though.
I used to use ImageFX years ago on my A1200 but could never get my head around it. I was always a big fan of Photogenics and Brilliance though.