How to justify the expense of Photoshop

It may be worth considering Paint.net, a freeware program supported by donations.

It will handle layers, adjustments, etc and really is quite good.  It is really worth trying especially if you are just starting into digital image manipulation - it may be all you ever want.

Kind Regards
Chris

You can get it here http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html ...

Their blurb...

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.  It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.