photoshop

I should be more explicit and use the word link, they are easy to miss sometimes.

Yes of course, it is absolutely your fault!

Doesn't photoshop have a full 30 day trial period when downloaded from adobe???

download free trial

Yes and to use it past 30 days it will cost over £650.
Almost a FA31 or a DA35 and decent 70-200 f2.8.

Yes but the OP only wants to experiment with it!!!

If you are a student or have children at school then the price is £184.99 from here

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Photoshop Elements 9 will do just about everything you would want and is not very dear.

If at a later date you wished to go for something like Photoshop CS5 then what you have learnt on PSE9 will stand you in good stead and lessen the learning curve as they are similar.

I have just got Elements 7 and have found some very informative video tutorials at the link below. looks like there is plenty of other content too.
http://tv.adobe.com/channels/

Try Adobe Lightroom 3 also it's kinda easy to use also.

If you are starting out in editing make sure that you only work on copies of the original files, particulary if you saved them in Jpeg format.

RAW is a differant story but as a first timer today I would work on copies until I knew how things worked.

my 2c
GReg

Lightroom is a much better bet for photographers IMO.

Especially if you take hundreds of pics, like the OP has stated. the cataloguing and pic management in Lightroom is excellent and it's pic editing facilities are far more efficient than photoshop ( or equivalent Graphics apps )

I never use anything else but Lightroom now for Digital shoots. The only time I use a graphics app, Corel Photopaint in my case) is for cloning out scratches and crap on 35mm negatives I've scanned )

what type of operating system do you use?