welcome to the forum arrowhead!

yeah it can be a bit of a pain trying to follow a tutorial in a different program, and i agree, PS is downright pricey! i use CS5 at the office but i've not been able to upgrade at home passed CS (two kids in college and not enough freelance work to warrent the cost!)

not sure how many GIMP user here but it dosen't hurt to post a question anyway. i might download the program a take a look (i especially like the above mentioned "portability")

retrocity