I'd like to purchase photoshop. I'm not a professional by any means, so I don't need their top of the line software. I'm looking at the Elements 12 on amazon for $75. Is that the best price? Are there other versions out there that may be a little cheaper and still good enough for an amateur user?
I disagree. I can't ****ing STAND GIMP. I'd rather use Elements than that program. I appreciate that it's free, but ugh...
This. GIMP is HORRIBLE. Photoshop is miles better and a lot more fun to work with. Yes, if you are an amateur purchase Elements. Not to mention most tutorials online are geared towards Photoshop. All the GIMP tutorials have terrible finished products in comparison.
Yeah I tried GIMP as well but just couldn't get into it. Maybe I'm just too used to Photoshop and need to give it another try. But frequently when I need to do any editing it's collaborating with someone else and typically they're a Photoshop user so I'm sticking with it anyways. If you happen to use a Mac I heard Pixelmator is a great and robust alternative for around $30.
I use PhotoShop CC. Its $20 a month for a student subscription and it includes the entire adobe master collection. I like it a lot.
What do you want PhotoShop for? If it's just to process photographs look into Adobe Lightfoot. If you want to do graphic work or need to put one person's head on another's body than I guess you need PhotoShop. Right now you can subscribe to Adobe's Creative Cloud Suite for about $10 a month and get both.
Seriously though, what's wrong with GIMP? It's a freeware, of course it won't be as good as Photoshop. But, it basically do what Photoshop does.
The moment you decide you want to do photo manipulation. Which requires a lot of blending, GIMP is utterly useless. Of course if all OP wants to do is change hue/sat, contrast, brightness, selective coloring, etc. then he'd be wasting money on Photoshop. General rule of thumb OP: If you are using less than five layers for any piece of work you are doing then you don't need Photoshop.
You don't have to do this. Don't tell anyone I said this, but you can sign up for an HCC class, become a "student," buy Photoshop with your ID, then drop the HCC class within 2 weeks for your money back.
He's gonna be using it for amateur work, GIMP should be fine. By the way RR, mind making a Rockets wallpaper? The one I have right now is dated, since it has Lin and Parsons.