limbo - 5:35 pm on Feb 23, 2007 (gmt 0)

The support for native digital camera files is not great for GIMP (eg Nikon NEF) - that said, Photoshop is not great without plugins.

However I have test GIMP's functionality and It's definitely worth giving it a go - what have you to lose? - it's open source!

You can happily optimise images, control contrast, colour, levels - it has layers, swatches, drawing selections tools and filters you can crop, enhance and export as most file types.

It's a very appealing package to those on a shoestring.

The other option is Photoshop-Elements - a rather tasty offering from Adobe that has most of the functions an hobbyist would need at a fraction of the price of it's older brother.

One thing it apparently doesn't support is CMYK & no Pantone swatches. This renders it (nearly) useless as a tool for print - but I imagine there is a plugin for that too.