Noob photo editing software

[baldzone]

Hi All,

I purchased a 550D a few months ago and am thoroughly enjoying learning how to use it, with mixed results most of the time!

I bought Lightroom 4 and have just about worked out how to use that for what I need, except for a few things that I would like to do.

1. Merge landscapes. eg, taking a picture of the sky at low speed, and the foreground at a high speed, and to merge the 2 to give good detail.

2. Edit certain parts of a photo to show a b&w background and certain details in colour.

What would be ideal for my needs? I looked at photoshop cs6 and can't afford that unfortunatley. CS4 is pushing the limit a bit but concerned about illegitamate copies.

Any recommendations?

 

[baldzone]

Gimp? Never heard of it until now. Such a noob!

Had a quick look on google and it looks promising. Does anyone actually use it? Any good?

 

[baldzone]

Thanks for the replies folks. Will give gimp a try and have a look at picturenaut as well.

When I feel I've produced some decent pics I'll post them up here. Loving the image threads by the way. Very creative