I never use my Corel Painter despite the terrible amount of money it cost. I hate everything about it except the water colors... I can do better natural medai in Photoshop 8. But that is just me... most people like Painter... I think I actually liked Painter 5 mor than Painter 8 though Painter 8 dynamic watercolors are a mazing. The natural media in PSP9 is supperior, less complicated, and more realistic in my mind. PSP9 does do 90%+ what Photoshop can do but I just bought it and I have not got used to the interface. martians, thanks again. That is helpfull re. eBay (not that I ahve ever used that)... the interface seems more straight forward then in the most recent trial Flash. In anycase, this is the SmartSketch I was after... should help me so much... I love drawing those smooth curves etc. I used to use SmartSketch to do nice clean line graphic style portraits and figures... illustrator programs are too complex and not spontaneous enough and my hands shake too much to do terribly clean graphic work in a raster program. this Flash is just right.