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Simply, for creative photo editing and manipulation (not just recovering photo's) what is best - Paint Shop Pro 8 or Photoshop Elements?

You will have to find out yourself what suits you best. If you plan to do photo editing professionaly later, I would recommend that you get Photoshop Elements and upgrade later to Photoshop. If you want to do photo editing just for fun, you will probably like Paint Shop Pro better. It is best if you get trial version of both and see which one you like better.

Personally I prefer Photoshop for photo editing and manipulation, but occasionally I also use Paint Shop Pro for less complex tasks. Photoshop Elements misses several features of Photoshop, so I myself wouldn't use it for more complex stuff. Paint Shop Pro has some of the professional features that Photoshop Elements is missing. Nevertheless in my opinion Photoshop and Photoshop Elements can be used more smoothly than Paint Shop Pro, once you know how to use them. Paint Shop Pro is probably easier to learn for beginners.

I'm a Photoshop user, but I'd suggest Photoshop Elements over PSP any day.

It has many, many, many of Photoshop's own features.

But the number one reason? Quality. You simply cannot beat Adobe's rendering engine. The quality of your final output will be much much better with Adobe imaging products.

fishdigi wrote:Simply, for creative photo editing and manipulation (not just recovering photo's) what is best - Paint Shop Pro 8 or Photoshop Elements?

I can't speak about Elements, but Jasc usually has a trial version of PSP available on their web site. Give it a go and see if it does everything you need. PSP supports many Photoshop plugins, too.

You can also order a trial disk from Adobe.com of Photoshop CS.

Don't take away my GNU....The Gimp. I'm a certified Master Photog.(where I come from) and use to DREAM of having ps7. My little rat leaves it spinning it's overloaded wheels. the Gimp is 'light' and can't be beat when comes to creativity. FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!How 'bout dual platform plug ins ??????? After all , its a matter of preferance. It dosen't have to be a status symbol. GTK runtime and you can enjoy both w/ the O.S u prefer........

fishdigi wrote:Simply, for creative photo editing and manipulation

The software is not the "creative" part of the process, so this pretty much depends on the user. No one can decide this for you. If you can get a trial of these programs then do so. You can also search for tutorials dealing with them to get an idea of what can be done with them. Compare interfaces, experiment with each one. In the end you'll pretty much discover that the differences aren't all that big between the programs, but how you and your creativity adapt to them.