I did it. Finally solved my dilemma between Photoshop 5.5, Wine 8.0.2 and Pop!OS22.04.
When I installed Pop!OS22.04 without proprietary Nvidia drivers, Wine 8.0.2 as well as Photoshop 5.5 installed uneventfully. What kept nagging at me was the fact that my other drive with Linux Mint 21.2 was running Photoshop 5.5 just fine, but with Nvidia's 525 drivers. So what was wrong with this picture?
I came to the conclusion that theoretically I should be able to run an Nvidia driver after-the-fact in Pop!OS22.04. That is, that I already successfully installed Wine 8.0.2 and Photoshop 5.5 using an open-source Xorg driver.
Knowing that at this point Pop!OS22.04 was
fully updated with the latest kernel, I took the plunge and installed the Nvidia 470 driver. Tweaked it in Nvidia Settings that downloaded along with the driver and then rebooted the system. Once back up, I went into my "Wine" section and holding my breath, clicked the Photoshop 5.5 icon.
Photoshop 5.5 came up perfectly. No error messages and total functionality. What makes it all so great is that Pop!OS22.04 is touted as one of the best distros for gamers or anyone running an Nvidia video card. Not to mention it has a superior repository (software store) replete with all kinds of apps and games as well. More so than most other distros I've seen so far.
So right now I'm having my cake and eating it too, after weeks of struggle.