I use PhotoShop Elements CS which is much cheaper than Photoshop 7 and which does what I need.
Lots of comments on this thread. In summary, photo editing is a way to improve your images to you own desired appearance. Not all photographers use it, but the majority do.
There are few images that I sell that are not edited in some way or form. The quote from Willy, is a good one. You need not use a full version of Photoshop to get lots of editing options. There are packages such as Photoshop Elements, which offer a vast array of tools to improve your pictures, and the advantage of Elements, is that it is kept very simple. The latest version is 4.0, but versions 2.0 and 3.0 are still very good. I use Photoshop CS2, as I have spent years learning how to use it, but there is little point filling your hard drive with this pro software unless you intend to use it to its full potential. The basics such as cropping, colour correction, cloneing (removing unwanted objects) and sharpening are all in the basic package. Be careful when using a sharpening tool as you do not need to sharpen very much to get a crisp image. Noise reduction filters, degrade the image quality, so again be careful how much you use. Take a look at my website (link below) to see the results of careful Photoshop work in the various galleries. Most of the aviation images have been tinkered in Photoshop.
On a final note, older versions of software are not neccesarily dead. They are actually a good way to try out editing without paying out a fortune. The newer packages offer upgraded tools, but to understand what they do, you need to understand the basics.
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