Sorry if this is off topic too far, but I figured some might be experts in this.  I'm looking to purchase a good photo editing desktop software product to run on Windows 7.  Wondering if anyone has experience with this.  Thanks.

Photoshop will prob. the first mentioned.  It is not simple to use, but there are more tutorials out there than you can imagine.  You can get PS Elements cheap, but the full-blown PS will cost you.

However, there are a lot of free options that are also supported well by their respective communities...  GIMP, photoscape and Picasa are all really good.  

photoshop elements is much better and easier to use then the freebies, under $100.

What exactly are you looking to do with it? Describe what you feel your most common tasks will be, and I can tell you what would work best. I am a graphic designer.

GIMP is the best. And it is free.

I use photoshop cs5 for many things

I have another adobe product that have become my favorite 'lightroom' ...

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom  

this link to direct you to a free trial...

Photoshop bar none...it's actually pretty easy to learn the basics of the program (cropping, reducing image sizes, saving as JPG, saving as web-ready image, etc).  And then at least you'll have the power that you need later as your skills increase and if you ever have a professional photo shoot -- you can do a lot more with the images in photoshop.

It's pricey though

Thanks.  I take a lot of pics and want software that would allow me to adjust for incorrect exposure, lighting, maybe correct minor out of focus issues, place portions of one photo onto another, such as add a portrait from one pic onto an ocean scene of another.  Special effects creation, remove blemishes, add special effects text, manage libraries of photos on user specified drives.  Crop, enlarge/reduce, adjust color.  I am not a photo professional, designer, etc... just a hobby and want some software that gives me a chance to fix pics, create new ones from others, and the like.  My only experience is with ACDSee, but I need more than that.  It would appear that most recommendations are for CS5, I think.  Thanks.

Photoshop Elements will serve you well enough. You don't need the full version of CS5, but it will be very useful to extract things from backgrounds or remove things from images. Elements does not have content-aware fill (it does have a content-aware spot-healing option, though).

An excellent free option is GIMP. It has almost all the features of photoshop, although the interface is different and not as polished. There is something called GIMPshop, which has the same features as GIMP but the interface looks a lot more like Photoshop.

Anyway, the biggest feature in CS5 that you will miss in every thing else is the content-aware fill. Here's a video describing what it is

Back in my Windows days I was very happy with Paint Shop Pro. It seemed to do just about everything Photo Shop did, with an easier interface. It used to be shareware, but is now distributed by Corel. (There are probably still legal free versions out there...)

These days I use Gimp on Linux and Mac.

The best thing, IMHO, about Photo Shop is that it's "what everyone uses," so there are lots of tips out there that can help you learn how to accomplish what you want.

Whatever you go with, good luck!

-- Modified on 2/3/2012 1:04:19 PM

The GNU Image Manipulation Program:

http://www.gimp.org/

Has a lot of powerful features like Photoshop with out the powerful price. Maybe enough for what you want to do ... has worked well for me in the past

Download for Windows here:

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

.......I can help you if you want CS5 (I have the full version) or PSP.