Take a look at GIMP. Its very similar in form and function to Photoshop and it is totally, 100% free. Not a demo or shareware. Simply free.

I use Paint Shop Pro 8. It's reasonably priced and does most of what Photoshop does for a fraction of the cost. Also look at the Mediachance.com tools. I especially like Real-DRAW Pro.

~jr

Another vote here for Paint Shop pro. (V8)

Excellent, reasonably priced image editor/manipulator.

And another vote for Paint Shop Pro!

PSP HERE - plus and don't forget it, if it is installed on your pc, MSPhotodraw. Tell you what, I find MSPD much faster and intuitive that PSP. But, PSP does handle layers in a more pro way than MSPD . . . . text manipulation in MSPD is a cinche and the various "distortion" options here are great.

I've got a place in my heart for both fine products. Would I upgrade to PSP 8? Errr... not convinced I need to. I got £45gbp PSP Anniverasry Editon No.7 - it works well .. .

Grazie

PSP here too!

Layers was hard to learn at first but do just about everything on it.
DVD covers, still images, etc

PSP "does most of what Photoshop does for a fraction of the cost"

The key words there is "Most of" what photoshop does. That's why it is a fraction of the cost, it can do some, but not everything Photoshop can do.

I have to put my vote in for Photoshop.

When you say you are going to "edit images" what do you mean? I only ask because you than say "I won't be doing a lot of complicated things." To me that could me you only want to crop and resize your images - if so you can get something like Vueprint which is really simple and basic and fairly cheap. If you want something that is free you could try Irfanview.

If you want to do more you can step up to Paint Shop Pro, as many here have already said.

If you want to move up even more than you can get GIMP, as BB already suggested...but as it was done as an open alternative to Photoshop for Unix based systems it falls under that level of use...I mean Photoshop-ish. There is a windows version of it and I have tired it - for me I did not like it as much as I liked Photoshop. (http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/screenshots.html)

FWIW - I use Photoshop 7 for most all image work. Since moving up to Windows XP I barely use Vueprint anymore as windows has a decent viewer built in now. I also use VFZoom for quick up-sizing of images. http://www.celartem.com/products/vfzoom.html

PSP8 is a great upgrade for Image editing and comes close to Photoshop in terms of functionality (Grazie time to upgrade). New into Image editing and PSP8 is the only option (it will cost less than the camera and be more important).

What it lacks is the marginal but important if you need it, third party support and the sheer amount of industry support for this photoshop can make a real difference.

Photoshop comes at a price so if you are not used to it PSP8 will more than satisfy your needs, in some ways it is actually superior on a windows platform. Just my opinion.

PSP8 will do 99.9% of what you need to do, Photoshop will do 99.95% - but if you need the 99.95 ..........

PAW

I use Macromedia Fireworks MX for most of my graphic for broadcast needs.
It handles transparencies, layers, and writes .png files.

Yet another vote for PSP. I don't know why, but I've never liked the Adobe interface, and have a strong aversion to any of their products. Must be something in the water up here in Oregon.

> Would I upgrade to PSP 8? Errr... not convinced I need to. I got £45gbp PSP Anniverasry Editon No.7 - it works well .. .

Grazie , If you ever needed to erase a background, you gotta check out the “Smart Eraser” in PSP8. Just click on the background and start to erase, when you get close to your subject in the foreground, it is smart enough to not erase it!

Also if you ever need to do perspective correction PSP8’s got it. If you have a shot that’s off at an angle (like a birthday cake that you couldn’t get right on top of, or a building that you couldn’t get right in front of) just tell PSP8 where the corners are an it will make it square again like you were standing in front of it. It’s really slick.

These were the two features that made me upgrade. I use background erase all the time for compositing images. It also has scripting now so if there’s a sequence you do a lot, you can script it and invoke it when you need it.

> The key words there is "Most of" what photoshop does.

Jsnkc, Yes and I was very careful to use the word "most" and not "everything". The good new is, I don’t what I’m missing. ;-) I can’t imagine what Photoshop has that would make me fork over $500 more dollars. (I don’t know about you, but $500 is a LOT of money to me).

~jr

I'm still using version 5 of Photoshop. <wink>

If anyone does a lot of involved editing of STILL IMAGES, like seperating foreground from background the latest version of Knock Out (version two) a plug-in for Photoshop, other graphic applications, it works great at making complex masks.

JR, thanks for the feedback. Erasor-Head! Nice!!! - Like the idea of distortion:perspective stuff - could use that! - MSPhotodraw is neat on perspective. Maybe it is time to drag my wallet out. I've got a "user" u/g option - not much money either . ..

Thanks,

Grazie