Photo Editing Software - Look what followed me home, can I keep it?

Dan found this great photo editing program called Paint.NET v3.22. It does just about everything my old program did, at least all the things I liked. It has clone tools, layers and transparency gradation as well as gobs of filters. Best of all it's FREE.

I researched all weekend and tried to download the free trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements (now only $99.00 - cough) and the trial version wouldn't run the edit portion, it kept crashing. So I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and navigated the website until I could find customer service form and dropped them an e-mail asking for help fixing the problem, that was last Friday. I haven't heard anything back yet. It's nice to get a little taste of what customer service might be like before I'm a customer.

I also found a very fun program with tons of filters and animated tutorials called VCW Vicman's Photo Editor. Vic Man offers each of his components for free individually here or all bundled together here re-named Pho.to the site also offers an "Online Photo Service" also at the magical price of FREE. I think the online photo service works similar to Flicker but I haven't looked into it too much yet. The photo editor I installed is fun, it has gobs of filters I haven't seen before installed in it and though it does the same thing Pain.net does with less ease I couldn't bring myself to uninstall it because of all the filters, I want to keep them.

Conclusion:
Adobe Photo Deluxe from 1996 - five stars (I loved this program - R.I.P.)
Paint.net - four stars
Adobe Photoshop Elements - no stars
VCW Vicman's Photo Editor - three Stars

Photo edited with VCW Vicman's Photo Editor - Sapphire #5 filter