Thought that you had to have a version of CS2 and its the licence to continually use it is now free?
On the deskop side of apps...
I've recently bought Serif PhotoEditor which I'm quite impressed by on a cursory play around (ok it was on offer with Photozoom Pro which is another hidden gem). I've used Photoshop and had Corel Draw/PhotoPaint and Serif does feel easier to manage. Though I always get special offer emails from them which is below the web price.
However, they do offer a free version downloads of an earlier version: http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
Also, you could try Paint.NET: http://www.getpaint.net/ which the last time I tried a few years back, was ok but still a little awkward. There's also The Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/ which may be a bit on the masochistic side of software interfaces. Wasn't too impressed with PhotoElements though (as it was a freebie with my graphic tablet it was worth installing) but I'll avoid it if I can.
