Q. I'm involved in historic restoration and annually shoot a couple of hundred images. I'm looking for a simple (and inexpensive) software that will allow me to take the photos and do markups for comparison. What do you recommend?

A.Contributing editor Joe Stoddard responds: For most Windows users, I recommend (and use) Paint Shop Pro. It does everything you need to do and costs only around $100. Some useful features are a thumbnail browser, advanced screen capture, easy resizing, easy text markup, touch-up tools, and good compression filters that make it easy to get images ready for the web. As a bonus, most Adobe Photoshop plug-ins will work with Paint Shop Pro, so you're really not giving up much by choosing it over Photoshop (around $600). With your savings, you can buy a digital camera.

The only situation I can think of where Photoshop would be necessary is if you're doing advanced color-matching or separations for commercial printing. Most contractors aren't going to do that in house anyway, and since Paint Shop Pro can save files in the various formats a graphic arts house would use (.eps, .tif, etc.), you're covered.