Free software may or may not be substandard--I use a lot of free programs myself--but if you want a program that really lets you do everything you can possibly think of with an image, in very fine detail, you generally need to buy one. The free programs are limited in their scope and ability. Photoshop Elements is a minimal version for the home user who has a few basic needs of a program for manipulating and resizing photos. It works for most people (but so many of these don't teach you anything about how to do it on your own because they have an AOL-approach and dumb it all down to point-and-click). I have at times used a couple of free programs to accomplish the thing I might have managed in Photoshop. One is better for adjusting the look of the image, another is much better for sizing it, etc.

SRS