Well then, check out this open source, free alternative called GIMP. Unless you're actually a developer, you'll want the pre-compiled binaries (in other words, one nice easy package you click on to install, just like every other program you've ever installed). Available for Windows, Mac, and Unix/Linux.

It can be a bit daunting to follow the trail of links and figure out exactly what you need to install, but it's not too difficult and in the end you'll have a Photoshop equivalent product for free! I'm certainly not a super advanced Photoshop user, so GIMP may lack some features, but from my limited exposure to it, it seems like a great alternative.

As a Windows XP user, I also installed the Deweirdifier plugin, which puts all of GIMP's windows into one single window on the taskbar (like Photoshop and all other programs) instead of having a separate window/taskbar instance for each of GIMP's separate windows (brushes, layers, main image, etc.)