Thanks everyone!

Vystirch have you ever look into Gimp? It is a free program that was designed for all the starving digital artists out there...basically it is a good free alternative to Photoshop. I took a look at it, while the tools are slightly different it has very similar capabilities...such as cropping (with masking not lasso unfortunately but it works). I was able to get photoshop because on a student discount...still cost a bit but worth it for me (since I am an art student)