Here's my two cents worth. I don't know a thing about photoshop but I have Corel photopaint 7, 8, 9, and paintshop 6 . I just bought paintshop so I don't know a great deal about it yet. As far as bells and whistles go, I give the edge to Photopaint it comes with lensflare filters, royalty free photos, and other stuff. My favorite so far between the Corel products is version 8. Version 9 has a few more effects like snow, rain , fog ,star , and texture filters just DON'T get the digital camera edition it has no support for Photoshop plugins( thats why I like 8 over version 9). Also version 8 and 9 come with corel texture, this is great for making textures for 3D objects. Now as far as paintshop 6 it has all the functions of photopaint without the extra's but from the short amount I have used it I think maybe that it performs better. Photpaint has a slightly pixelated look when painting while paintshop looks a little smoother and paintshop definately has better vector tools. Whatever you choose I think I would go for the cheaper programs because I really think either of the above would do what you need and more.