Photoshop for Free - Kind of

Just a quick note for any shutterbugs out there. If you've been looking for some good photo manipulation software and don't want to pay the full-boat price (~$900) for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe recently announced their online Photoshop Express version.

I'm definitely going to try it out. This sounds interesting: "Do what you want with your photos. Give them cartoon colors. Distort them . . . Pop Color, Sketch, Hue, Black & White, Tint, and more."

I normally use MS Picture Manager, which is a great-but-little-known utility included with Microsoft Office Suites. If you own either Office 2003 or 2007, you might need to dig for it on the CD (doesn't install automatically), but it is there . . . and it doesn't cost any extra.