Workarounds for disabled/missing features ?

[Busdriverfella 1]

Greetings again!

Does anyone know of some workarounds for disabled/missing features of Elements that are in Pro or Hotshot?

For example, 'Glow', 'Chop', 'Fractalize', 'Color Blend' and certainly 'ImageCut color'.

I was looking around in the 'SignBlazer5.5 HotShot Demo Version' that came with the Elements download, and there are some VERY COOL features in it, but since it's simply not practical to obtain the software (either Pro or HotShot) there has to be some folks out there that have figured out ways to get the same results in other ways.

And since I'm just a guy at home with a cutter, there's no way I could spend that much cash on the software even if I could get it.

I'm using Inkscape, Corel when I have to, and SBE.

Thank you.