Sooz, you should qualify for the educational discount, no? The academic version of either Photoshop CS2 or the entire Creative Suite (a very good deal, if you think you'll use the other apps too) is WAAAAAY cheaper if you buy the academic version.
Academic Superstore has CS 2.3 Premium, which includes full versions of Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, GoLive CS2, Acrobat 8 Professional and Dreamweaver 8 for $379.
http://www.academicsuperstore.com/market/m...l?PartNo=763254MacMall is another good source - they're often cheaper than Academic Superstore.
Given that Photoshop CS2 all by itself costs $289 for the academic version, the Creative Suite is a great deal.
BTW - Adobe will come out with CS3 some time in 2008 - they're saying some time in the 2nd quarter last time I checked. The one advantage of waiting is that you'll then have the universal version - although if you're using a G5, it doesn't really matter. How much photo editing do you plan to do right now? Can you wait? iPhoto does have some basic capabilities (way more than it used to) and there is also Graphic Converter which is comparatively cheap.
The other option worth considering is
Photoshop Elements 4 - the academic version of that is just $65. A comparison of the two can be found here:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop...entscompare.htm