Buy Photoshop Elements
why i can do more things with octave ( the OSS version of "matlab" )
and nip2/vips and i can support 8 bit,16 bit singed and unsinged ,32 bit float and partial float( openEXER) ,128 bit cineon ,...
i can even add cimg.h into the mix and handle openGL and 3d formats also
through gsl and idl and isis in ,and i can even work with the NASA & ESA spacecraft images
Photoshop can not do that.