Photoshop or Something Else?

Have you looked at Adobe LightRoom? It is pretty nice for what I think you are looking for. There is a 15 day demo you can download. It is not crippled in any way other then the number of days until it stops working. You can go to the link below to download.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/?sdid=BSRFB&s_...|1220705553

This is what i'm using:
1. Photoshop CS3 for Image Editing (nothing beat Photoshop, eh?)
2. ACDSee for photo management
3. Image Compressor for image compression and batch RAW converter

Trisha,

Have you tried looking at the freebies...G.I.M.P. http://www.gimp.org/ Its fantastic and with it's new interface almost like Photoshop (superb), some say it rivals photoshop, I think it's up there with the best and it's free so you can't go wrong downloading it even if you don't use it often.
Another alternative is get yourself signed up for the new Photoshop Express http://www.photoshop.com/express/
It's an online "very" cut down version of CS3 which allows you to do some pretty basic editing but it's all free (For the moment) and it has some rather feature to all the basics that you mentioned for cropping/colour/exposure/contrast etc.

http://www.contextfreeart.org/index.html is quite good if you want to make random vectors for your pictures especially trees etc which is free.

http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/bworks.htm has several free standalone picture transform editors especially B/W works which is superb, I used it with other bits to do my Edinburgh Alleyway Duotone picture, the result can be superb, colourcastfx and clearskinfx from this site are also cool to use. Highly recommended as they are really easy to use and you don't have to spend hours transforming pictures, literally seconds to do impressive pics.

Nothing will compete with CS2 or 3 but you may find the free software I mentioned more than capable of creating quicker and often better pictures as you won't need the knowledge as you would with Photoshop.

Have you tried looking into batch editing / Actions with Photoshop, that may be the answer for editing photos which need the same changes/settings.

Get yourself signed up to www.photoshoproadmap.com as previously mentioned as they send you daily projects via email and some are very impressive and give you step by step tutorials on how to !!! One of my fave websites.

Hope this helps ?

I use Photoshop for edit all of my pictures at first, Paint shop Pro for quick Frame and Photo Impact to add the Text on them if I want to...The new software I havent tried it...because untill now I cannot use all the function of photoshop yet...I hope some function I dont know can ask your help here...Photoshop just give us a lot of tools we can use it or not or in which way...depend on our choice our skill our knowledge about it...not just use it to put the head of something to another thing..couple years ago I was very happy when I finished this one ;

i think this is why photo folks like DAM type software apps like Aperture and Lightroom because you can view multiple photos side-by-side and edit within the program. I'm a die-hard photoshop girl and I'll always use it, but that's because I'm a designer. Since I am a newbie in the photo world, I'm going to start using Bridge CS3 as well for the photo management aspect. I hear it's a good simple lightweight DAM and since I already have it, there's no additional expense for me. I am just a photography hobbyist, so I cannot justify buying something deeper than Bridge CS3.

I haven't heard much about Picasa in terms of being able to stack up to Aperture or Lightroom.

if you like the way of photoshop that can do many pictures at once, use adobe lightroom.
I use that most of the time.
I love picasa too but it doesnt come out for mac version :(
I've tried aperture also, the good thing about it when use it for shooting on the set, the picture will show up on full screen and you can check every detail, but the problem is that aperture is a bit complicated compare to lightroom.

the differences between lightroom and photoshop is ... layers and other digital imaging purposes, lightroom can't do that (anyway you have to do it one by one rite?) RAW processing in photoshop is available in lightroom, just try it first before you buy it, you can download the free trial fully working for 15/30 days.