Anyone have a Photoshop replacement suggestion that supports the ability to trim external areas of a picture based on transparent pixels or color and crop the image automatically?

This would be the same function as the Photoshop Trim function.

I really need this function but do not want to spend the money for a retail of PS CS3.

You tried GIMP? Link

Free Trial of Photoshop Elements or CS3 Trials? Must register to Adobe, but it's free. Once registered, go Here and look for the trial version of what you want.

Yup..my problem is that the trial expires

I tried gimp and photoshop elements. Both are decent programs but do not support the two features I really want:

Trim which is very useful for writing my guides and tutorials

and

Actions - so that I can automate the adding of watermarks to my pictures.

It kills me that these two basic functions is what I want photoshop for, but I cant find em elsewhere.

Trial for CS2 then?

Serial Keys?

Possibly try one of Corel's programs, I dont know if any of these programs have the features, but surely if Photoshop has it, there must be other programs out there that do it. Im just listing all the graphics programs I can think of...