Computer programs for working on pictures

I have used PaintShopPro 6 for years, but various things made it necessary to look for new ways to work with images.

PhotoFiltre is a French program, which is available in an English version. It is able to read .psp files (the PaintShopPro format), which is a major plus. And, it's free is you are using it for non-commercial purposes. It does have some cool special effects -- engraving, photomasking, embossing, making letters out of patterns, etc. I was able to quickly resize pictures, adjust the brightness and contrast, and save files as tifs, bmps, jpegs, or other types of files (but, as far as I can tell, you can't save them as psp files again).

Paint.net is another free program. It doesn't seem to be able to read .psp files, but it does well with a lot of other formats. I don't find the interface quite as friendly as PhotoFiltre, but it does allow you to work with layers (PhotoFiltre doesn't). It also has interesting special effects, and you can find lots more that can be downloaded from the forums.

PhotoFiltre Studio is the much more expanded version of PhotoFiltre, and it has layers, perspective correction, and lots more nice stuff. You can try it for free for 25 days, but then need to pay. (After watching the dollar gain strength against the euro and the price fall from around $50 to just under $43, I purchased it. The price is now down to $39 and some odd cents. I used Paypal to purchase it because I was concerned that my credit card company would put an extra charge for purchasing overseas.)

I have not used PhotoFiltre Studio enough yet to give a comprehensive review. I will say that some of the plug-ins and tutorials are in French only, which means that I probably need to dust off my high school French and get out a French dictionary!