Creative Crayola Crapola

I’m having one of those “you’re not in preschool so why does everything you come up with look as though it’s been designed with extra-large crayons?” days. Bad times. The stupid thing is I am starting to become really well acquainted with the GIMP’s capabilities (beyond just making photos look less-bad) and now its interface is what feels limiting (especially the way it handles layers and masks versus the way Photoshop does). So now I’m up for a grand worth of software (that I so can’t afford) just to make myself feel better about the tools I’m using, etc. and hopefully get more productive accordingly.
Anyone wanna donate to the buy-Josh-Creative-Suite-2 (even though 3 is about to come out) fund? It’s my birthday tomorrow, if that helps! ;-) Hehe. (No, really, it’s my birthday tomorrow… I’m joking about the buying me CS2 bit though)
Frustratingly, there are free CS3 betas to be had on the Adobe site, but only if you’re an existing CS2 user. Sigh. I could use it at work, but lack of acceptable Internet connectivity and no dual monitors is pushing me to stay at home, instead.

Speaking of software, though, as soon as I buy that it’s time to finally get Premiere as well. So. Sick. Of. iMovie/WMM/Avid Free DV/whatever. The few times I’ve had opportunity to use Premiere for a while have been fairly pleasant experiences — obviously it’s a lot more powerful than free crap, but that doesn’t seem to have a massive usability trade-off. Which is, you know, kinda nice. Only, again, kinda expensive.

If I pay any tax this year after having claimed all this software I’ll be slightly horrified :P