Adobe Photoshop 5.5 is not a HUGE improvement. Yes it does have some pretty cool features added to it (for instance, there are cross-hairs around the cursor which gives you more acuracy) but not too much difference. I don't recommend an upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 because there isn't much difference, but if you have the money, go for it. Image Ready, the program that comes with it, is very cool. Easy to animate banners or logos for you web site and then compress it. Yeah, the optimizing is extremely helpful. All of the images on my web site load much faster than it had originally. But the animation is not the greatest. It is complicated and difficult to use, and takes lots of practice (well for me it did). I don't know if you should call it an animation program because there is only a little you can do with that, but the optimizing is great. I have yet to explore the program a little bit more, but so far it is helpful. -Adam