Which Photoshop?

[two]

But you can learn to use it for free. A lot of providers charge to to discover wether it's for you or not. The only risk is your time.
I cut my teeth on ACDSee a long time ago (when it was free). Since then it may have become more complex, I don't know, but I thought it was good at the time. It's primarily a viewer and organiser but also contains features to edit photos. I don't think you'll need the pro version, but that's an optional upgrade that you could try first anyway.
Whatever you get, you'll need to invest time in to learn how to use it. Every developers idea of intuition seems to differ from everyone else, so I doubt there's anything that you can just 'pick-up and use'.
Best of luck, anyway.

 

[Lenny HB]

It's not quite as simple as that. It is there as a replacement copy for people who originally bought or licensed CS2 and have a valid licence number, not as a free for anyone download.

If you download it and don't licence it then it's no different to any other pirate software.

Anyway it's terribly outdated and bears little resemblance to CS2017 so it's not much use as a learning tool. I don't even know if it will install properly on up to date operating systems.

It installs fine on Win 10 and when they made it a free download there were no restriction on it's use they just made it clear there would be no support for it.

 

[Vanman]

Just in case anyone was wondering ... I've been self teaching to use GIMP, just when I really need to do something. So far I can rotate, crop and save in other formats/sizes

 

[Deleted member 29692]

Just in case anyone was wondering ... I've been self teaching to use GIMP, just when I really need to do something. So far I can rotate, crop and save in other formats/sizes

That’s the best way.

Nobody needs to know how to do everything with this type of package. You wouldn’t remember it all anyway and very few people want or need to get deeply into image manipulation.

Figuring out how to do something as and when you need to do it is the preferred method for most users, even those of us that are using it professionally. When you consider that there are multiple ways of doing most things it makes even more sense. YouTube will always be your friend. Whatever you want to do someone will know how to and have posted a video lesson.

The best tip I can offer, especially relevant when you progress into adjusting levels and other retouching, is know when to stop. If it’s a photo keep it natural.

A sure sign of an amateur who knows a few techniques but has no understanding of what they’re actually doing is a photo that looks like an acid trip. Example: if you’ve taken a picture of the beach at Skegness in November it isn’t going to look like a tropical paradise. The sea and the sky weren’t that colour and nothing was actually that bright so don’t retouch your picture to make it look that way.

 

[TerryL]

Some may laugh but Irfanview has some basic photo editing features - it all depends on what you want to do - and it's free.

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[Puddleduck]

I used to really like the serif products photoplus, drawplus and the like. They have also "upgraded" to "affinity" but what they call the legacy products are still available http://www.serif.com/photoplus/

At one time the older versions were free