Photoshop alternatives on MAC

I upgraded my laptop (my primary system) to a Mac Power Book Pro in February. I was previously using Photoshop CS2 on Windows XP. I now want to upgrade to CS4 but the cross-platform upgrade process for Adobe is so extremely complex and time consuming (wait for Monday - business day, minimum of 3-5 days shipping) that I am now investigating alternatives.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives (other than GIMP) to Photoshop CS4 on Windows?

You should give Pixelmator a look.

GIMP is worth giving a shot.. since it's free and all. As long as you're running OSX

http://www.gimp.org/ma​cintosh/

dlpasco wrote in post #9140245
I upgraded my laptop (my primary system) to a Mac Power Book Pro in February. I was previously using Photoshop CS2 on Windows XP. I now want to upgrade to CS4 but the cross-platform upgrade process for Adobe is so extremely complex and time consuming (wait for Monday - business day, minimum of 3-5 days shipping) that I am now investigating alternatives.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives (other than GIMP) to Photoshop CS4 on Windows?

2 alternatives;

1 use aperture 2 as your software

2 run a partition on your macbook and install windows in bootcamp to run photoshop.

hth

Tony-S wrote in post #9140341
You should give Pixelmator a look.

+1 on that, cheap but powerful.

Thanks for all of the responses - the reason I said "other than Gimp" is that I am using Gimp on a Linux system already. I am considering moving all (or most) of my photo editing to Linux and will use Gimp for that.

Checking out Pixelmator....

The GIMP still isn't 16 bit (though it's supposedly coming). There's also CinePaint and Krita in the freeware arena.

If you shoot raw, then you should consider Aperture or Lightroom.

Thanks Tony-S (love your quote). I have Lightroom on the Mac already, migrated from Mac. I've not heard about CinePaint and Krita. I'll check them out. I'm also installing DigiKam on Linux now.

Tony-S wrote in post #9140341
You should give Pixelmator a look.

Another vote for Pixelmator - It will probably do everything you need for a tiny fraction of the price.

Use Gimp if you are dirt poor and don't care about a clean interface.

dlpasco wrote in post #9140245
Does anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives (other than GIMP) to Photoshop CS4 on Windows?

What do you do with PS?

Maybe PS Elements8 does all you need. On OSX it has a "full" ACR. (Then again; you have LR for that)

I use photoshop for two things. I take team and individual photos of our local hockey teams. If I have a player photo that is too hot and my backups are not good then I'll use photoshop to recover it. That doesn't happen very often. I also use photoshop to construct "sportraits" - dropping player photos into templates.