Thinking about getting a macbook

So I have had my hp touch screen laptop for about 1 and 1/2 years and I am thinking about getting a macbook the hardware for it is just like my laptop but it only has 2 gigs of ram and my hp laptop has 4 but I already know that macs use the hardware a lot better. But their are a couple things I want to know before I buy one, I want to know if I should spend a extra 100$ for the 4 gigs of ram. Also I am a digital artist and I love garage band for mac but I want to know if their are any photo editing programs for mac like paint.net and I don't mean photoshop I hate photoshop I use it the least I can and I already know that I am going to get photoshop lightroom for mac but I want a real picture editor for it. So If you have any info on those please tell me thanks bye

Depending on what you are using the computer for you might not need 4 Gigs of RAM. It's nice to have don't get me wrong, and I think it's worth the money. Although I haven't checked RAM prices for awhile but I'm guessing it's still in the 100 dollar range even if you did by it from a 3rd party vendor and installed it yourself.

There is iPhoto for really simple basic stuff, and then there is gimp which is pretty much like photoshop but free.

You should also look at Pixelmator, which is around $60 and highly regarded. It's no Photoshop, but it's pretty good.

For photo editing, and for just general multitasking (having more than one program open at once) you will be better off with the 4gb of ram and the $100 is not that much more than it would cost you to buy it from a third party source and install it yourself.

As far as non-photoshop editing software, as someone mentioned, gimp is a respectable alternative. I don't know how familiar you are with apple software, but iphoto, which comes with the macbook is really not a professional photo editor. If you are just preparing pictures to post to facebook or something it will work, but as a professional photo editing package it is not going to have the image correction and layering capabilities that photoshop or other packages like photoshop have.