[Speedklix]

yeah, and a more basic program that is still a little pricey, but not nearly as bad is Paint Shop Pro, often refered to as PSP.

With a decent book from your local Borders you can learn to do some pretty good stuff with it. Make sure you get a book that comes with a CD or has a site you can download files to work with as they tend to be a little better. They ussually run between $15 and $30 in the store. May get them for almost nothing online at places like half.com about this time as many colleges use them, so there will be a lot of used ones listed which are not being purchased. Closer to the begining of a semester is when the prices creep up.

The Photoshop trials I have tried in the past have just had some of the plugins and "tweaks" turned off. You could still do the basics for cleaning up a photo and save a file and all, but there have been a few versions since. I never got to know photoshop well enough to know if it was worth the money over PSP, but it is what all the GFX people use, soo...