it has many useful features, and its a graphics industry standard (though some may argue on it) if you need merely layers and 'painting', look for paint.net which is free and has layers. rather crap but you have the not so legal way, forking out a lot of cash, getting adobe photoshop elements 2 which is like a downgraded version with most features but cheaper (still about 100 bucks or so though) or you can stuff the idea and get the gimp which is pretty good but confusing. you don't really have all that many options.