what program should I buy for photo editing?

Paint Shop Pro... This is what I use. I'm not a professional at all either, and I do not want to spend so much money for Photoshop... which takes up a LOT of memory anyway. I've been messing with Paint Shop Pro since version 5 or 6 came out, I think. Back in the EARLY days. It has everything you mentioned. You can get a free 30 trial of it as well. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 I think, and recently the price came down to 60 from $100 dollars, I think. I paid $100. It's well worth your money if you want quality but not professional expensive quality, if that makes sense.

I've learned a LOT on this program with photo editing. To me, photoshop was too confusing and time consuming. There is also GIMP... which is a free program, but the user interface is pretty bad and hard to learn. At least it was for me.

There's a lot of auto settings on there too...whiten teeth, tan skin on photos... lots of corrective things. Once you get the basics down you can learn even more too. It has everything Photoshop has, AND a smaller manual for it as well.

As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of Paint Shop Pro.. haha.

My suggestion would be to download the free trials to both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro and see which one works for you, though. I got PSP for the same reasons you mentioned pretty much.

I bought a VERY old version of Photoshop for 40 dollars at Mejers a few months ago. I found it to be a waste of 40... no way I'm paying that much money for a computer program that I'm not even a professional with.

anything over the internet is free..you just really havent learned all the tools of the web...MUAWHAHAH..but photoshop is the best !!!

You should buy Adobe Photoshop CS4 ..............

None you cant do **** without expertise