Paintshop 9 or Photoshop 9

Actually, I'll one up Lita. It's not "very likely" that those are pirated. I would bet every cent I have that they are. And win.

Simple economics. Nobody is going to sell a program that *regularly* goes for 1000+ USD for about ~30 USD (My european money conversions aren't that great), used or not. It would be like selling a used, good condition Hummer for 500 dollars. It just isn't going to happen.

Its particularly not going to happen time and time again.

GIMP works ok, for being free, but I don't much care for it.

For the money, my vote is Paintshop Pro.

I love that line.

Moved to Design forum.

To answer the original question, Photoshop has the most features, but PSP has a MUCH higher feature per dollar ratio. In that sense, PSP is a "better deal," even though it's an inferior product. Personally I always try to go with the best whenever I can, regardless of price, because I believe in most cases that the better product ends up paying for itself over time. Not everyone agrees with that philosophy though.

As for your later comments about finding both programs cheap on Ebay, be very, very cautious. As others have said, it's got to be pirated for that price which means it may work only for a limited time if at all, and you won't be able to get support if you need it (and you most likely will), not to mention the fact that stealing is just plain wrong.

Adobe has been so good to me over the years, support-wise, that I consider their prices to be bargain basement, even though they're obviously pretty steep. I mean how many companies' TSR's actually call you back at your office inbetween your hectic meeting schedule to continue trouble shooting a software problem with you? How many check up with you a couple day's later to make sure everything is still okay? Adobe has impressed the hell out of me by doing stuff like that. That's the biggest reason I've remained so loyal to them.

Anyway, if you want the functionality of Photoshop, but you don't want to pay the high price tag, GIMP is a great alternative. It's a totally free download from gimp.org, and if you google for the GIMPshop plugin, you can make it look and feel just like Photoshop. I'd much rather see someone use GIMP legitimately than use Photoshop illegally. As a Photoshopoholic, I don't use GIMP myself beyond just playing with it once in a while, but I am a big fan of it. It's not often that a good thing costs nothing. Gotta respect that.

Oh, and by the way, you mentioned you wanted something "easy to use". Sorry to tell you this, but whether you go with PS, PSP, or GIMP, there's going to be a steep learning curve at first. The web is teeming with tutorials for all 3, so go through as many of them as you possibly can, and sooner or later, the logic behind the program will click with you and you'll be able to do anything. That can take a while thogh, so be patient, be diligent, and be willing to suffer a little in the beginning. I'm sure you fell off your bike a few times before you learned to ride, just like we all did. It's no big deal. Just keep going.

Adobe, hands down, is the better program, but if you're someone who has never used either Adobe can be quite overwhelming. Its so feature rich that most people will never even use 75% of the program either because they don't know its in there or they have no use for it. I can't tell you how often someone asks me a question and when i tell them what to do they say "gee, been using photoshop for 3 years and didn't even know that was in there."

I know you can get trial versions of both of these programs and honestly, if I were coming at this with little experience, I would do a trial on both and see which you are personally more comfortable with. There's no point to spending tons on Adobe if you get it and all you ever use in it are the obvious tools in your toolbox and if you plan to only learn to use it for online gaming.

So, from a begginer's point of view, I'd say trial them both but most likely go w/ paintshop until you're sure that you can and will use these programs at all.

And as Willow said, its all about Photoshop 7 (dark ages or not). All they did with the newer versions is make the interface all pretty and complicate the program more than it already was.

I liked what Kathmandu Gilman said earlier, if given the choice, Kath would rather pay $100 for PSP and use the other $500 for something else. I just had PSP9 bought for me (contract job) when given that choice, mostly because I've used PSP6 for the longest time. As for what I would spend the other $500 I saved not buying Photoshop, I'd would've bought a Wacom 9x12 graphics tablet.

That out of the way, yes, Photoshop the better program, featurewise and third-party support, but PSP9 is cheap and effective. My client spent $80 on my copy, because the office supply store had an instant rebate, and there was a mail-in rebate for $20 if you bought or were buying a digital camera in the last 6 months.

BTW, Severe, are you using a PC or Mac? I recently came across some old Photoshop CDs that, unfortnately for me, where for the Macintosh. PM if you're interested.

uh... what about GIMP?

Depends how desperate you are... It's the most buggy and least user-friendly of the three options, IMO.

This opinion comes from someone who uses it a fair bit and actually like it, by the way, not someone who hates it.

Whatever you do, be certain not to download either one from usenet.

You might be tempted to get a premium new service like http://www.easynews.com and look for it there, however despite the ease which you would be able to do so (along with a lot of plug ins), and the speed at which you can download from such a provider (often as fast as your network can handle it), it is wrong to download pirated software - even the quality stuff that makes its way to usenet.

So no matter what, definitely dont do that!

-AP