Now let's look at some digital imaging programs that will get you up to speed in practically no time. Almost every high-priced digital imaging program has been developed for graphic designers whose final output is an image on a printed page- and the demands of laying down millions of itty-bitty dots in exact registration during four passes of unstable paper through a temperamental printing press is a lot tougher than ending up with a photograph from your own desktop printer.

That's why I suggest you avoid high-end programs (at least at first) that'll bog you down in a morass of printer's terms and functions that don't apply to photographers. You'll just be paying an exorbitant price to become indentured to a long and difficult learning process with software that requires an expensive computer configuration to run properly. It's like buying an 8x10 camera to shoot news pictures.

The following easy-to-learn programs will give you instant gratification. After all, if you can't enjoy it, why even get into it? All require almost no RAM to speak of (as little as 4MB, in some cases) and very little hard disk space. Most will run just fine on older machines -albeit a bit slower- and they cost very little.