You prob­a­bly don’t need Photoshop. I cer­tainly don’t. For the ba­sic work I do Paint.NET is more than enough. You can work with lay­ers, ad­just col­ors, and do sim­ple ef­fects like blurs. For ba­sic im­age ma­nip­u­la­tion Paint.NET is the best, and that’s why I sup­ported it with my June cre­ators do­na­tion.