Can I use Corel Vector as a substitute for Photoshop?

With Corel Vector, you can do basic photo manipulation, but Photoshop or Gimp are definitely better suited for handling raster images. Corel Vector is equally fine with the PNG and JPG format, though. Corel Vector is rather a vector editor, meaning that everything you create in the application can be scaled and manipulated without losing quality. So, it’s best to import SVG or PDF files, as they are vector-based. Here’s a comparison between raster and vector: https://graphicmama.com/blog/vector-and-raster-whats-the-difference/