If your work is mainly photos, you probably don't really need the "arty-creative" stuff in Photoshop, and can get by with Photoshop Elements. Elements has all the photo gimmicks, and lots of photogs who have both use it instead of the big Photoshop for their photo work.

I don't know what the conversions are currently, but Photoshop Elements should be less than about $90 or $100 US.

I personally prefer version two, since they've gone "microsofty" with making later versions look like glorified pinball/arcade games; but the tools are still the same - you just have to think like an idiot child to find them. And later versions have far too much "automatic" crap that you need to learn to bypass to get to what you really need. The later versions - the ones I've seen - do still work pretty much like the earlier ones once you figure out where stuff is.

There is a freeware program that claims to be "equal to Photoshop" but I found it a bit clumsy for the photo work I tried out on it; and I don't have it on this machine and have forgotten the name.

Maybe someone will come up with it shortly.

John