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Back when I was still using Windows (a long time ago!) I always wanted to buy PhotoShop. But it was just too dang expensive. So instead I used Paint Shop Pro. Fairly decent software. Then I discovered PhotoShop Elements, a stripped down version of PhotoShop. What Adobe did with Elements was remove the user inferface to many of the more advanced PhotoShop features, but they left the features in Elements! I guess it didn't take too long for this to be discovered, and a book named "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements" came out. It included a CD that you could run and bingo! ... the interface to the hidden features was restored. So PhotoShop Elements became more like full blown PhotoShop, but for a much cheaper price. Note that the vector drawing stuff from PhotoShop was not included in Elements, it was just the photo editing stuff where they hid the interface. So with the Hidden Elements book and CD you could basically turn Elements into full PhotoShop for the photography features, but not for the vector drawing features. Still, that was quite an accomplishment! I do not know if newer versions of Elements still maintain the hidden features, nor do I know if the Hidden Elements book is still available.
After I canned Windows many years ago and switched to Linux, now I use GIMP for all my photo editing. It is just about as powerful as PhotoShop, and free. I have not found one single thing I wanted to do that I could not do in GIMP (when compared to PhotoShop). So I'm a happy camper now. Graphics professionals may still find a reason to use PhotoShop over GIMP, but the typical home user probably will not. GIMP is available for Windows as well. Note that GIMP works differently than PhotoShop. People used to PhotoShop will probably be lost when first learning GIMP. But resist the urge to whine "this is not like PhotoShop!" and focus on learning the way GIMP does things and I highly doubt you will be disappointed.
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