Grisue, you can also check out Photoline32 as another alternative: www.pl32.com
Then there are still The GIMP! and CinePaint available for free, and they are also steadily getting better and are sufficient for most web related work.
I have used The GIMP, Elements, PhotoLine32 and CS3 Extened on the Mac, and PaintShop Pro is the only one that is not available in a Mac version. The last PaintShop Pro version that I used was 7, which obviously was a long time ago. So I cannot say anything useful about current versions of PaintShop Pro.
I bought PhotoShop CS3 Extended because I actually use some of the extended features. It is an expensive beast, and I think most people will NEVER need it.
PhotoShop Elements does most the relevant work, and it even uses the same file format as its bigger sibling. Aperture for example exports quite nicely to Elements in PSD format and re-imports the changed photo without any problems. It can use other external editors, too, but the interesting thing here is that it uses Adobe's native PSD format instead of TIFF or JPEG (NEVER use that for digital photos!!!!).
I don't know about PaintShop Pro, but Elements also works very well with RAW files -- which is a killer argument for me. Most other programs actually have problems with RAW (especially when it is Pentax RAW, what I use).
The downside is PhotoShop's "unique" user interface, which could need a lot of improvement. The same can be said about its performance. However, PhotoShop is the de facto standard, and it has by far the best third party support and comes with a load of features. And both Elements and CS3 have the best "magic wand" utility that I've seen (and that is another killer feature for me).
If you want to spend money, my vote goes to PhotoShop (Elements). But you should carefully evaluate if you really need to spend money and if, let's say, Paint.NET and The GIMP! won't do the job for you.
Then there are still The GIMP! and CinePaint available for free, and they are also steadily getting better and are sufficient for most web related work.
I have used The GIMP, Elements, PhotoLine32 and CS3 Extened on the Mac, and PaintShop Pro is the only one that is not available in a Mac version. The last PaintShop Pro version that I used was 7, which obviously was a long time ago. So I cannot say anything useful about current versions of PaintShop Pro.
I bought PhotoShop CS3 Extended because I actually use some of the extended features. It is an expensive beast, and I think most people will NEVER need it.
PhotoShop Elements does most the relevant work, and it even uses the same file format as its bigger sibling. Aperture for example exports quite nicely to Elements in PSD format and re-imports the changed photo without any problems. It can use other external editors, too, but the interesting thing here is that it uses Adobe's native PSD format instead of TIFF or JPEG (NEVER use that for digital photos!!!!).
I don't know about PaintShop Pro, but Elements also works very well with RAW files -- which is a killer argument for me. Most other programs actually have problems with RAW (especially when it is Pentax RAW, what I use).
The downside is PhotoShop's "unique" user interface, which could need a lot of improvement. The same can be said about its performance. However, PhotoShop is the de facto standard, and it has by far the best third party support and comes with a load of features. And both Elements and CS3 have the best "magic wand" utility that I've seen (and that is another killer feature for me).
If you want to spend money, my vote goes to PhotoShop (Elements). But you should carefully evaluate if you really need to spend money and if, let's say, Paint.NET and The GIMP! won't do the job for you.