That's great, I see you will be getting good use of them, lol.
Didn't know Photoshop was expensive, been wondering about that. Which do you prefer, have you had a chance to play around with both enough to make that decision...or is it different programs for different activities?
Well, Photoshop wasn't too expensive. I think I paid like $85-90 for it. However it is Photoshop
Elements, not CS2 (or now there is CS3). Adobe's CS products (CS=Creative Suite) are the commercial/professional versions of the software. I wanted to get Photoshop CS2, but at the time I just couldn't afford $500 for it. Someday...

My Illustrator software however is CS2 (and cost $500)... So, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my money's worth out of it!
Anyway, Photoshop and Illustrator are designed to complement each other, but they handle different tasks. Photoshop is, of course, photo-editing software. Illustrator, as the name suggests, handles more fine art. You can do some tweaks to photos in Illustrator but it's mostly messing with color or converting it to a vector drawing so you can move, delete or change lines...
I'm guessing you would want Photoshop. Unless you are a graphic designer, you would have little use for Illustrator. (I'm not a graphic designer, but it is a hobby of mine) Photoshop will let you crop photos, remove red eye, ect, ect. And even then you can still get a little more into the design arena with Photoshop... you can add textures or filters to your photos. There is a lot of neat stuff you can do, even with the mainstream version (Elements). The graphic in my signature was done in Photoshop...
It is my firm belief that Photoshop is the best photo-editing software on the market... but I may be biased since I have been using Adobe products since high school.

Anyway, I do think the PS Elements is totally worth the $85-90 I paid for it! So I would definitely suggest it!
I would
not suggest getting Illustrator unless you are prepared to spend
A LOT of time learning how to use the software. You can do hundreds of amazing things with the program... but first you have to learn how! It can be very frustrating for someone with little or no experience with graphics programs. Heck, it's still frustrating to me some times!
I know that was long-winded... I hope it helped at least!
