Awesome Photoshop Equivalent Alternative (and FREE)
This week I was introduced to Paint.Net a free photo and image editing tool. Within 5 mins I realised it was missing 1 major feature crucial to a web developers toolkit - Photoshop PSD support. A quick Google an hey-presto someone's already written a plugin for it! Just download it and add it to the FileTypes folder (then restart app).
For all those Photoshop Elements users, this pretty much does everything you've been used to but without the memory leaks, processor rapage and system crashes. It's also a extremely usable equivalent to Photoshop itself.
The only let down is that doesn't support layered PNG's (aka Fireworks files) and there is no built in vector graphics which is why I use Fireworks.
So what you waiting for download it and checkout the user packed forums for other plugins and feature requests (I'll be putting mine in later)
P.S One final thing, if you are missing a feature such as move marquee or add to marquee etc try using right click first tends to be there!!