Today I purchased an old but fully working film scanner and it turns out that the programs needed to run the thing include Adobe Photoshop (5.0 limited edition). Does this version of the program have any advantages over the current version of Microsoft paint in terms of being a photo editor and/or drawing software and would you recommend that I make the switch to photoshop?

This is sort of an amazing question because at first I scoffed at the idea of ms paint being comparable to any form of photoshop, but honestly I'm not sure since supposedly ms paint has made a few advancements which I'm not privy to.

I'm deeply interested to know the answer out of pure curiosity

No, instead you should switch to either Krita or Fire Alpaca.

Professionals using Photoshop doesn't mean it's worth your money or efforts to crack.

Don't waste your time with Adobe's junk.

I personally use Krita, but Fire Alpaca gets a good share of attention with Digital Art on PC as well, Krita has similar aspects to Photoshop, like making custom brushes, or patterns (color or texture), and all around has never once failed me.

Easy to use as well.

Photoshop 5.0, a program that came out in 1998? Not CS5, just 5? I assume that you're buying ancient technology for the retro appeal and you want an equally obsolete editing program to match. Are you emulating Windows 98 or XP in a virtual machine to run it? Learning old things can be fun, so like hey, it's quirky, knock yourself out.

If you meant CS5, that's one of the last perpetual license versions of Photoshop (CS6 being the very last) and so it's relatively easy to crack. The features that they've added since then in Creative Cloud versions are frankly not that impressive; it's basically the same software minus some niche features you'll never use.

If you've never used a program with layers, basically any of them will be better than MSPaint. Photoshop from 10 years ago or even 27 years ago is going to have that advantage.

I originally bought the film scanner with the intention of scanning some film negatives but upon discovering an old version of photoshop I had the thought of replacing my crappy art program with another crappy art program. I'm currently running the film scanner and Photoshop with an old laptop on Windows vista.

I'd also like to mention that recent versions of Paint have layers.

Those sound like some really nice suggestions, both are clearly better than any art program I have on my computer. I will be considering the two once I decide to take making art seriously. For now, I'm going with either Paint or extremely outdated Photoshop.

A few new features I have encountered with paint are the addition of layers (extreme improvement compared to past versions), a new design I'm not very fond of, Generative erasure, Backround removal, and some feature that have to do with the use of ai,.

So far, I've noticed that Photoshop 5 has a few features that paint doesn't, like a gradient tool. However, it's a little inconvenient that this version may not work with more recent computers. Photoshop is a little confusing but that's just because I haven't acquainted myself with it yet.

Slightly unrelated but weirdly enough I draw 100x better on MS Paint than I do on an actual art program.

i second krita and firealpaca. by the way, newgrounds has a list of links you can benefit from (taking you to the official sites and download pages as well as listing which art software here is free). for photo manipulation, i also recommend GIMP (easier to set contrast/brightness) or, since you're on windows, paint .net

I use Photoshop 6.0. But mostly for a very specific task which Krita can't do well, and that is, converting images to indexed color palette format. It comes in handy for making .gifs

I honestly had to double check the date, to see if this thread was really made today instead of 20-25 years ago.

I would not recommend Photoshop 5. It's far too old by this point, and drawing was much more difficult in those days, even with a tablet. Photoshop CS5 or CS6 are the oldest versions I would recommend. If you are looking for something free, Krita would be a better option than PS5 or MS Paint. Also you could try Ibis Paint https://ibispaint.com MyPaint https://www.mypaint.app/en/ Medibang https://medibangpaint.com/en/app-download/