Well, I am thinking of taking this photography hobby a little further and decided to invest in a photo editing software. Everywhere I go, Photoshop seems to be the #1 choice. However, I am reluctant to spend that much money if there is something cheaper that will provide the necessary tools. Any other recommendations out there?

JASC PaintShopPro is pretty good. There's a few others also, but they aren't very well known.

Adobe's Photoshop is "the standard" though - especially with the plugins available and integration with Illustrator and the whole "Creative Suite".

Wow, $60 to $375 is a huge difference. I don't know if I can go for the latter one. I downloaded the demo for Paintshop Pro and am giving it a try. We'll see how it goes.

Any other recommendations are greatly appreciated.

I use 1.0 of Photoshop Elements. I think they are up to v4.0 or something... there's plenty of flexibility and power in Elements, unless there's a specific gap I'd say the full Photoshop is Too Much Info!

Wow...I never even thought of getting Elements. It seems to have all the necessary tools that I would need for the type of editing I do to my pictures. I also found it for $50 something on pricegrabber, making it light on the wallet as well.

Thanks a lot for your advice.

Photoshop Elements has really come of age in its latest release - definitely worth a look! If you've got an Apple Mac, consider the latest version of iPhoto in iLife 06: it borrows some of the most useful bits from Apple's pro app, Aperture, and comes with iWeb, so you can manage, edit, email, and post pictures onto the internet from your collection at the drop of a hat. It also makes calendars, cards and books which are really good fun.

I just purchased it and have been a very happy customer since. Thanks for everyone's advice. I am glad there was a cheaper alternative out there for amateurs like me.

You've had it for a day or two: how's it going? anything to post for the rest of us to see?

Adobe is releasing (later this year?) a new program called Lightroom that is designed especially for photographers. There is more info and a beta version for Mac (and soon for Windows too):

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

Looks interesting to me. (Though I doubt I will ever have the money to actually buy software, long live freeware!)

How do you find decent freeware - I search & find a lot of rubbish & perhaps the odd virus!