Photoshop Alternative

Nope, Photoshop is still the industry standard / best.

CS2 Premium FTW!

photoshop is still industry standard. GIMP is free, but takes a bit of fiddling to get it working on OS X. It's pretty similar, but probably more of a stepping stone up to photoshop. I've seen some pretty nice stuff done in GIMP though (and I know my photoshop stuff), so it's definitely worth looking into.

as for gimp

i use it

all you have to do is install X11

this is on the osx dvd

thats for intel imacs anyhow using tiger

One other program to consider is GraphicConverter, which Apple provides as part of the included bundle in each PowerMac G5 (presumably on the Mac Pros too). This is a surprisingly capable program. Well worth checking out and spending some time with.

However, the real royalty in this area is Photoshop, then Photoshop Elements and then GIMP, in that order.

Note that GIMP does not understand Color Management at all. Photoshop has full Color Management support and Photoshop Elements is somewhere in between, with partial support for color spaces. This continues to make Photoshop itself the king for real graphic professionsals.

Wow, so Photoshop still reigns. That's good news because I have access to it at the student store. Do I need to look for the Mac version, or should it be compatible with Windows/Mac?

There is a separate version and it is still the gold standard of photo editing programs