Ok, I am a "professional" photographer. I say it that way because I am just now going pro. I still kind of think of myself as advance amature, but anyway. Here is what i need help with. I have Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photoshop 7. Everytime i play in photoshop i get so confused and upset that i cry. I just get lost in it. I really like psp8 because i can handle it a lot better. Now they have come out with 9. I am also going to get the new Paint Shop Album the deluxe version that comes with digital scraping stuff too! That is another thing, i can digitally scrap in PSP8, but when i try to follow the tutorials in PS i get soooo freakin lost! I am wondering if i should go with this ( i will get a very good discount if i do) or do i get a book and try to learn photoshop? I don't know hardly anything about photoshop so maybe someone here can help me out. Can you whiten teeth in it? Heal acne scars? I know you can make digi pages iwth it...LOL I just don't know how Please help me out.....

I have both Photoshop CS and Paint Shop Pro 9. I started as photographer using Photoshop, and frankly, I think it is the better program for dealing with photos.

Paint Shop Pro works great too, but I don't use it for photographs, only for "art". I actually don't use it very much, but I like the "warp brush" in it, and a couple of other things, so I do switch to it on occasion.

I have a set of tutorials for brand new Photoshop users here:

http://www.tandika.com/tandika.plx?rm=tuts&c=Newbie

You might want to try the first one or two of those and see if that helps you make more sense out of Photoshop. These tutorials don't expect you to know anything about the program except how to start it up on your computer. If you try those and still feel lost and confused, you may want to stick with PSP, since you feel more comfortable with it.

Tandika*

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If you want to do stuff like whitening teeth, healing scars, general portrait retouching in Photoshop then run, don't walk and get a copy of Katrin Eismann's brilliant book Photoshop Restoration and Retouching. It's marvellous!

Also for retouching-type stuff you might want to check out http://www.retouchpro.com -- a very friendly community of retouching professionals and amateurs -- mostly they use Photoshop but there are a fair few PSP users too so whichever option you end up going for you should get some great advice and tips there.

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Leah

Thanks ladies!!!