Recommend me a software for editing photos

I have used the trial version of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and I loved it! I decided to buy Elements because it was under $100 and it has most of the features of Photoshop.

I have a couple of blog entries about free resources for photographers! This entry http://info4photographers.blogspot.com/2009/03/online-photo-editors.html compares the different features of a bunch of different free photo editors available online. And this entry http://info4photographers.blogspot.com/2009/05/free-photography-tools.html lists a bunch of free photography tools available for photographers. Hopefully those will help you find exactly what you're looking for!

Personally, I use Photoshop CS2 or 7.0 because I'm used to it and it is a widely known photo editor.. but you can't really tell which is best because each has its own unique features.. Photoshop is for rasterizing images while Corel Draw is a vector based type program, which means that you draw using geometric figures and shapes. On the other hand, Photoshop works in pixels or bitmapped images =D My classmate also used to recommend me Corel Painter in which unlike Photoshop you can automatically merge layers but I haven't tried that yet.. I'll stick to Photoshop =D

I prefer Adobe Photoshop in getting rid of the background using its Pen Tool. This tool is like tracing the unwanted part you want to get rid of. When you're done tracing it, it creates a selection marquee which is ready for deletion or replacement of any preferred background.