I’m a big fan of Photoshop but even the Elements version is pretty pricey if you want to equip a suite of machines with it.

Try Gimp instead. It’s a freeware, open source version of Photoshop. It won’t do a few of the more exotic things and the interface feels clunky (everything in separate windows, yuk!) but for 90% of your photo editing needs it will do the job just fine. Great if you want to step beyond Picasa.

Our tame visiting supergeek (a bit like the Stig but with IT) has also shown me an open source vector graphics package called Inkscape. USeful if you want to avoid splashing out on Adobe Illustrator or similar