A friend at work told me his wife just gave him the thumbs-up to go out and buy Photoshop CSx (whatever the latest version is). I asked him a question about neutral density filters and if it could be simulated in Photoshop. He said he didn't know, he had never used Photoshop. Huh. Next I asked, well then what do you need Photoshop for? He replied that he though that since it is the "grandaddy of photo editting software", that he needed it. Of course that begged the question, um, just what is it that you need to do with photo editting software? And he said, oh, straighten, crop, adjust contrast, that sort of thing. So I had to tell him that he could do that (and much more) with Elements, or even with (free) Picasa. I also told him about Gimp, which is a FREE Photoshop-like application (just google it). Lots of people love it. It does have a somewhat steep learning curve, as does Photoshop (Elements is easier), but for the price? Definitely worth taking a look at. Anyway, in summary, depending on your needs, there are such price differences in photo-editting software, if you don't need all the bells and whistles (which add to the learning curve), save your money and frustration. I've used all of the above applications quite a bit (for both photo-editting and digital art) and find that Elements will do just about anything I need. But if you don't mind the learning curve, do try Gimp since it's free!
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