Photoshop or other similar programs?

I don't know if this is the right place to post this (sorry if not) but I was wondering if someone could tell me if there is a good alternative to Photoshop or something like it. I tried something called Paint.net but I am apparently too techno-impaired to use it. :) Either that or if any generous person wants to photoshop something quick for me. I am trying to make a header for a blog. Nothing complicated, just a picture or two plus text logo. Thanks and again sorry if this is not for the GD forum.

Paint Shop Pro comes bundled with all sorts of tutorials, plus there are many free download tutorials available.

It almost teaches you how to be an artist.

Plus, as I said in the OP, when it comes to anything technology-related, I'm a doofus. It took me two days to get a wireless router working. :)

There are thousands of tutorials for Paint Shop Pro on the net. That is how I taught myself PSP ten years ago.

My "expertise" is photo manipulation. A sample I did for SoCalDem a number of years ago:

.

And one for me:

Came with wordperfect/corel mixture. It doesn't do much, but can flip, red eye, minor stuff with ease.

I am going to try the other program but I'm sure I'll suck at it.

Would you like me to PM you or something? I can give you my email address or whatever you need. Thanks!

if you do so quickly, I can probably have it done before I leave in an hour

thanks for reminding me of it... the netbook will run that better than GIMP

Elements has pretty much everything you'll use to manipulate images for a blog, without the steep learning curve that GIMP or Photoshop takes.

However ---

If all you're looking for is a program to crop, resize, alter basic image elements (brightness/contrast, saturation, color adjustments), flip an image or rotate it in small increments, convert an image to grayscale, capture an image from your screen, set an image as wallpaper, create a slideshow which can be used as a screen saver or self-extracting program, make a panorama, paint, erase and clone images, play a wide variety of video formats and such, I suggest you download the free program Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) and its associated filter package. It's got a shitload of other useful features, including creating contact sheets, then turning those contact sheets into thumbnail pages in html, where all you do is click on the thumbnail to get the larger image, also in html. You can also select a group of images and turn them into an html slideshow (different than above) also formatted to be posted on the web. You can add text over an image, or do a batch rename or resize or both at the same time.

Plus there's a lot of spiffy plug-in effects.

Did I mention it's free? And it's unbelievably easy to learn and use, and has a great Help function to take you step-by-step through a process. I've been using it for 10 years on a daily basis.

There's also a version of Irfanview you can carry around on your thumb drive. http://tinyurl.com/2relac

GIMP is also available as a portable app: http://tinyurl.com/ms6ym

There's an effort to create a Photoshop-like interface for GIMP to make it more familiar to people like me. It was only available for Linux, but now there's an Apple and Windows version. http://tinyurl.com/cqg3ho

BTW, if you are going to post photos on the web, be sure to get Microsoft's Powertoys Image Resizer. http://tinyurl.com/553fw6 My sister used to send me 3MB picture files, which shut down my email program. Once set up (easy), Image Resizer will be found in your context menu -- just right-click on the image file you want to resize, choose the size (I always choose Large, which produces a screen-size image without any noticeable loss of quality) and voila, you get a copy of the original image which has been resized from 3MB to 125k.

Hope this helps.