I'm a huge Paint Shop Pro fan and I find that for the beginner it is much easier to use. Photoshop is absolutely amazing if you've got the time to really sit down and learn it but for those that don't and still want professional results I recommend Paint Shop Pro more than any other graphics app. And I agree 100% about the use of PNG images vs. JPG images, there is no comparison, especially if you edit and save the image multiple times. No quality loss on PNG images edited, saved and repeated versus huge losses on JPG images.