I have no idea if any Photoshop version is available for free or cheap somewhere. I got mine about 10 years or so ago while I was still a student and able to get a discount that way (and unless my memory gets it wrong, I think it reduced it from ~1200€ to ~200€). I remember trying GIMP around that time since it's free, but I'd already gotten way too used to Photoshop (due to using it in a class for university) and caved. It probably helped that I also suggested it to family members as a present for me (at the reduced price).

I had used Photoshop 7 prior to getting CS5 and while there (obviously) were some newer features in CS5, there were a lot of similarities. So, tutorials should be able to translate to other versions.


As for requesting tutorials - I haven't really considered limiting how many get requested, but the more you request, the longer I'll need to get to every one (assuming I hadn't gotten lazy with keeping track of what I did for any of them)