GIMP: Like it or Lump it?

I was teaching at a community college and they could not afford the licensing for Adobe so they told me to try and use GIMP. I first laughed at the name and then tried to use their app and their GUI really stinks!!

I have to disagree with your assumption that the Gimp is less powerful then photoshop. I’ve used both and I have to say that the gimps technology is more powerful. First off. The toolbox has more useful tools listed then Photoshop. That makes it easier to use. Second the layers viewer is easier to get at and easier to use and quicker to work with. In terms of editing photo’s the gimp has all the functionality that Photoshop has but it is in a slicker user interface. Its easy to confuse the simplicity of Gimps interface with a lack of functionality. Adobe’s propaganda is massive. But I use the Gimp. I can’t stand Photoshop.

I’ve heard people claim that Gimp just as powerful as Photoshop, but like you, I assume they haven’t used Photoshop anytime lately. It’s not just the 1997 interface that turns me off, either. Maybe I’m just missing the tool that lets me edit textures on 3D models with actual 3D previews? Perhaps I overlooked the tool that automatically patches areas based on the surrounding texture instead of having to directly clone them? I really wanted to love Gimp, honest. And I’m sure it does save some users money, but I just couldn’t get it to do what I needed it to do.

I recommend The Gimp to people who would otherwise pirate software to get a graphics editor. In other words, it’s great for a free editor, but I don’t use it myself.

When I tried it, admittedly several years ago, I found it hard to use and slow to respond. It didn’t work with my pen tablet, so I couldn’t readily draw with it, and it just seemed clunky. I’m willing to assume that it’s improved since I tried it, but I’d still rather pay for Photoshop and get the tools and functionality I know.

While the GIMP can take care of many image editing needs, I personally find it not a productive choice. Even low end, low cost image editing software may very well be a better value in terms of time spent.

Tom

I think GIMP is great but I also agree that the GUI is not very good. Instead of using the standard GIMP, I use GimpShop, which is a re-skinned version of GIMP. I am not an image editing expert so I find that GimpShop is more than adequate for my needs. Plus, it’s free and open source!

I have used GIMP for many years and adore it. Granted, there is a learning curve and the interface is less than intuitive in many areas, but once you become familiar with the program, you will find that it not only does the hard stuff for you, but allows you to do things that other graphic manipulation programs simply do not have the tools or the power to do.

(My Wacom pen tablet works perfectly with both the Windows and Linux versions of GIMP.)

While a little out of date, the Grokking The Gimp manual can help reduce the learning curve.

I love the GIMP. I love Photoshop. GIMP lets me get things done when work won’t pay for another Photoshop license. There is no Photoshop for Ubuntu.GIMP has some built-in features that Photoshop needs custom Actions to do.

I just recently started using Gimp and I find it easy to understand and use I can not afford Photoshop right now and so I have used several free graphics editors and I puchased a program that claimed to be as good as Photoshop and I could not master it so for now The Gimp works for me.

I agree with Christian at least as far as GimpShop goes. It has the GUI similarity to Photoshop and its free. I haven’t explored it to its fullest potential, but what I have I was satisfied with as a back up. Nothing beats Photoshop’s tools and array of plug-ins in my opinion. But, for free, GimpShop would be the next best thing. As far as the original Gimp goes, I can’t even really stand looking at the interface.

I have GIMP, PSP X2 and an old photoshop 6. I mix and match working on images between photoshop (where I can use more plug-ins) and PSP which is a lot easier for other tools (for me). I’ve tried GIMP repeatedly, but can’t see that it offers more. The tool bars just hanging in the void are more than disconcerting, too. I really don’t like it.

Hi all

I have been using GIMP exclusively for the last few months now and on and off for years. It’s quite different but can be very productive once you begin finding your way around it. And by the way I noticed a number saying anyone liking gimp must have limited experience with photoshop. Sorry this is not true.

Gimpshop is also not supported by the official gimp team and is always behind the current release schedule. Apart from the official gimp website also try typing meetthegimp in google and have a look around there.

Finally $1000+ or piracy for Photoshop or free for GIMP. I might also add that 16bit imaging and adjustment layers are under development for GIMP.

Regards to all Pete

I really don”t know what to say about it because i don”t know to use it and when you go to there help area you don”t get any where
is there a video to watch and learn more about it

GIMP is an incredible piece of software. It is not just free, it is excellent. I have been using it for years in my graphics work.

I don’t know if GIMP is just as powerful as Photoshop, but I do know that it works just fine for me when I get graphics that need to be adjusted to be printed in the newsletter for BRCS (Boca Raton Computer Society).
The two user groups I do the newsletter for are both non-profit volunteer run organizations, which can ill afford to purchase Photoshop.

I cant say that I love Gimp more then Photoshop. But who balks at free? It seems so many people would rather do without than take the time to lean something that they consider cheep. Oh well. Gimpshop makes Gimp easier to use for Photoshop users, its not as powerful as the newer Photoshops but it comes with a lot more pre- set controls. One step buttons Id like to call them. So you can get in and push a button then you have basket weave. To accomplish the same thing in Photoshop you really have to know what you are doing. Cs4 is really nice though and I find myself missing it when Im not using it. But it goes both ways

Then again I use Gimp at home on an old computer and Photoshop at work on a new computer with all the latest updates eaxtra storage and memory. The lag could be from my computer and not the program.

Admittedly I can live without nice. The same reasoning that I use when I drive my old truck around. It gets me from point A to B. Thats what I need it to do, the rest is just flair that maybe I can afford later when/if its imperative that I get from point A to B faster.

The arguing about which piece of software is better will never end . As for me, I’m not really a design professional and don’t need tons of functions that Photoshop provides. On other hand GIMP (especially last release, which is 2.6 for Linux) have very simple interface and is easy to use. Anyway, it’s great that free software can be better than something with the cost of 1000$.
I wish the GIMP team good luck!

haven’t used either much, but have little use for them anyway Tried them in 2006 (cs2 & whatver ver gimp) and disliked both. very anti-intuitive & klutzy UIs, IMO. (so, obviously I haven’t been tempted to try gimpshop, because it’s said to be imitating PS’s terrible UI.) If ps cs4 can edit in true 3d, that’s kind of interesting, though. OTOH, it’s rather late to that game.

I might try them if either is now capable of gathering a rgb map, by color-picking over an area.

I run GIMP in Mac OX Léopard and it will be impossible for me to find how to guet the download of the manual and some keys to work whith selection d’ont work. i’m not a professional and many indications of how to solve problems are’nt understandable., but I find it very interesting. As I work better whith Photoshop I will prefer it but as it is so expensive I try hard to learn GIMP. Excuse my bad english

I not very advanced with graphics creation software period but I now have GIMPshop and I really do like it!

I had a couple of brief encounters with Photoshop years ago and couldn’t figure out the first thing about it. A couple of years after that I downloaded a trial version of PaintShop Pro and was totally lost with that one too. I only had that version for a month but could never learn how to work with layers. It was baffling and totally frustrating! When my PSP version dried up due to the trial being over, I tried downloading GIMP. I couldn’t even manage to get it installed!!!! grrr!!! All of these I thought were terrible due to problem installation and/or steep learning curves.

A few years later I downloaded ImageForge and I **LOVED** working with that! It was simple enough to learn even though it wasn’t very powerful. It was powerful enough to do basic things though; and not really being an “artist” I was just wanting to play around with something to express my creative instinct without becoming frustrated. So it was a great program. In fact, I still have it even though I don’t really use it much anymore because of having GIMPshop. It’s still nice for a really quick task like simply resizing something or converting it to a different format.

Last year I bought PSP 9 on eBay but didn’t get a disk. I just got bought a download version. **BIG** mistake!!! I had it only for a short while… maybe a month or so…. before my computer crashed. I couldn’t fix my computer and couldn’t even get the person that sold it to me to respond to my emails. I hadn’t spent an excessive amount of time with it because it was frustrating to try to learn. Again I was totally lost in dealing with the layers. I had no idea what I was doing. I was reading the Help files just like I did with all the other programs but still didn’t understand.

About a month or so ago I heard about GIMPshop and downloadeded it. I was leery at first to even try it because of my previous experiences with both Photoshop and GIMP; but I thought I would give it a whirl before throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I’m really glad I did too!!! I’ll admit this GIMP hack has it’s problems as it can be unstable at times if you don’t know what you’re doing. So I’ve crashed it a few times in learning. I’ve definitely been able to learn a lot faster with GIMPshop than I did with anything else though!! I know quite well how to work with layers now and I’m learning filters and other things as well. I’ve already been making my own brushes and patterns quite easily and having a humongous amount of fun doing it too! I just learned how to do seamless tiles the other day and was shocked at how easy it is with GIMPshop!! I was using a Photoshop tutorial to try to learn but Photoshop commands are still different from GIMPshop in many areas and I had to look for the comparison in GIMPshop to make it work. After I figured it out (which didn’t take long at all) I looked at the tutorial and realized that doing it in GIMPshop was so much easier than the tutorial had explained for PS! The GIMPshop technique was even shorter and easier than for PS! So I’m thinking that even with the instability at times that GIMPshop is my tool of choice now! A really great reason to use it on top of that is **IT’S FREE***!!!!! I’m a college student on a very strict budget and paying for PS is not an option. So even if I **wanted** to go with PS I couldn’t. So it’s GIMPshop all the way for me!!! I’m blazing new trails and learning new things every day! Thanks also go to the folks on deviantArt.com for providing some resources like the tutorials, brushes, patterns, and what not that I’ve used up to this point. There are some wonderful people on DA that are super supportive! Not a lot of folks I know use GIMPshop yet but I think it will catch on after a while. Free has it’s benefits even though some folks are afraid of open source software! I know I used to be! GIMPshop has changed my mind though!

I just got into Photo Editing, and I’ve been able to apply all the tutorials that have been written for photoshop, in Gimp, quite easily.. I found photoshop to be too bulky and confusing for my needs.. Gimp is compartively less resource-hungry and faster. It might not be sufficient if you do graphic-designing for a living, but for a casual user I think it’s more than sufficient..

And the latest versions have drastic improvements.

When I started working with Photoshop I had never to look up any basic functionality. It was just extremely intuitive, in the way it behaves.
The first time I used Gimp and still most of the time I can’t even get simple thinks (like cutting out something) to work right away without needing to google how to do that.
Working with Gimp is just a pain in the ass. It has a terrible work-flow.

Been using Gimp for months now. Did have an older version but only used that sporadically. Since downloading 2.6.6 I’m hooked on graphic design. The menu and interface has improved so much. It’s really very logical now.

Had to edit a PSD file in photoshop the other day because it had layer effects that Gimp couldn’t read properly. I only needed to change the colour of one layer. It took me ages to find the curves tool. You see, in Gimp it’s under the colors menu, in Photoshop under image-> adjustments.
You tell me, where would you look for a tool to edit the color?

Photoshop wins in features but the interface is horrible. And you can’t click on anything when there is a pop up window open. Remember the curves example I used earlier? I wanted to look at the underlying layer before I clicked OK but it wouldn’t let me. Gimp will. If you want a large font in Photoshop you have to type it in manually, in Gimp you can zoom to a larger font. I can go on for ages.

The only reason most people like the Photoshop GUI better, is because they are familiar with it. I’ve seen that noobs are equally confused by both the GIMP and PS interface.

The thing with ANY software, love it or hate it, letting a GUI interface intimidate you (especially a free program) is no excuse for blasting the software. Whine and moan all you want, the bottom line is that once you wade into the GUI and start learning what tool does what, what scripts/functions work best, practicing tutorials, you eventually start warming up to the software, whatever that software might be.

All you GIMP bashers who complain that the “interface sucks, this sucks and that sucks”, are forgetting one crucial point: software can only get better when you “CONTRIBUTE” to its development, and that includes commenting disfavor with certain functions/use, etc. This software is FREE, people. Do you understand FREE?

I’d use GIMP over Photoshop any day because I know that in future versions of GIMP, I am actually helping the program improve. Whereas with Photoshop, it’s just shrinking my wallet, upgrade after upgrade.

Photoshop looks prettier than GIMP, so what. GIMP has more flexibility, and because its open source, you can get in under the hood, compile, and test, even run your own scripts. GIMP offers more versatility in how you want it to run.

Pound for pound, everyone knows that Photoshop has the power edge over GIMP. No one is being fooled here. I’ll say with confidence that in the next few years you can expect GIMP to make leaps and bounds in its performance and capabilities and still cost you ZERO out of pocket. Will you be able to say that for Photoshop?(this question does not include software pirates).

So, before you “destesth much”, consider why you really don’t like ANY software. If all you can think of are things like, “It’s not pretty enough” or “it’s too complicated to use”, etc. Then your opinion shouldn’t really count. Come back and talk when you brave the GUI and actually try learning to use it without the prima donna attitudes.

I used to love Photoshop because it was all I knew, and, furthermore, I was Windows only. One weekend when my Windows computer went into one of its periodic tangles and required an OS reinstall, I decided, what the heck, I’ll give Linux a try. Needless to say, one thing led to another, and, today, while I still have a dual boot (xp/Ubuntu) setup, my home machine runs Linux 99% of the time. I really yearned for some Linux photo-editing solution, but, like many here, found my first attempts with Gimp just too frustrating. Of course, had I used the common sense to work through any of the many fine tutorials (written and video) available, I could have been where I am now some four years ago.

Long story short (and yet another strength of Gimp), I was out of town with my camera and no computer except for my daughter’s Vista laptop, and wanted to play around with some of my camera images. Without my photoshop, there was not much I could do, so I went browsing at a local bookstore, came across a book about Gimp, bought it, took it back to my daughter’s apartment where I downloaded Gimp and started working through the book.

The more familiar I became with Gimp, the more I started to appreciate that for free, just about everything I need to do with my photos I can do in Gimp, and some features simply work better, some tasks simply faster in Gimp than in PS.

I love that I can right click anywhere in the image to display a menu in which tools like levels and curves are just on layer deep. In PS, I am tied to that drop down menu where I have to find image-adjustments-curves.

Neither approach is unduly complicated, but Gimp’s seems simpler and more fresh to me.

PS’s tools perform a bit more smoothly than Gimp’s (and that might make some new Gimp users feel as though Gimp is a tool that is rough around the edges), but, in three minutes working time in Gimp, I find that my attention is fully on my work without distraction from the slightly more jerky performance of the painbrush while cloning, painting, etc.

Scaling a brush in Gimp seems far simpler and straight forward than in PS, and I love the way Gimp’s perspective clone works – very intuitive, very, very useful.

As tools, both programs deserve praise. It wasn’t that long ago that photo editing on the computer was a distant dream for most mortal users.

PS and Gimp are both great tools, but the difference between them shrinks everyday, and I like not having to pay out of my pocket to keep up with the times.

Caruso

Wow. Difficult to understand how anyone got this working. Downloaded three times. Files look OK and then menus don’t load. WASTE OF TIME.

I’m not an expert – most people aren’t. This is not usable in its current state – sorry!

I am comparing free vs. free here; this is my experience (I am a newb at this, so my perspective is clear that I have no idea how to use either program.):::

I used a free version of PSE 2.0 yesterday at work; our systems policy dictates that we cannot download un-approved products to our work systems.
I dowloaded at home GIMP 2.6.7 to compare the products.

Both items allowed me to do what I needed to do to my photos. I missed in GIMP the pain-to-select tool that PSE offered; however the ’scissors’ tool (smart-line detection select) seemed to do the trick.

PSE left an ugly white line at the perimiter of the layer. Nothing was moved out of the frame to cause this.

GIMP had a halo around the layer that I removed to edit and place back to the image. This was easier to manage than the line that appeared on the PSE test.

would I pay ~$100 bucks for PSE when GIMP is free?
The difference to me does not warrant the add’l cost. I would rather stick to learning GIMP than having to pay out of pocket for a few aesthetic differences. GIMP seemed to do whatever I needed it to do.

Hi
I think GIMP is fanatastic. I just started learning about it a few months ago. I also purchased some inexpensive tutorials on it that show you some design applications. I think if you are new to graphic design to use GIMP, but also to buy some of the videos that actually help you with it quite substantially. With some of the free tutorials, they do the instructions very quickly or miss out on a few steps, because they are fairly expert they forget what it’s like to learn. Don’t stay in a ‘layer’ of frustration if you are new to graphics, get some help. I recommend for starters Matt and George’s ‘Walkthrough’ of GIMP. I’m just on 61 so if I can learn graphics all you guys out there can. Just Google it and see what you get. Janice of Brunswick Melbourne.

I really love Gimp and I just started using it a few days ago. I’ve already used it to color a few old artworks of mine. It was simple, efficient, and actually fun! I was using a bootleg version of PS for awhile and, quite honestly, I think I may delete it. I don’t need it anymore. It makes my computer run so slowly and I was never comfortable with the idea of pirating software.

Gimp is harder to install (I don’t remember having an issue, mind you) and maybe it’s harder to figure out for beginniners. But I found it pretty intuitive and very similar to Photoshop. Almost anything I’d want to do in Photoshop, including the pen/vector tool, I can do in GIMP… and it doesn’t slow my computer up!

Overall, I’m just gonna say… to those naysayers, give GIMP a chance! Get the thing installed, follow an intro tutorial, and go with it. It is not as scary as it looks. Plus it’s free! There’s no reason to complain.

The professionals that use Photoshop at work make up a tiny minority of the total user base and if you need 16 bits, etc. you probably wouldn’t be considering using anything else in the first place.

For the rest of us you can spend big $$$ on Photoshop (or take yer chances on a pirated version, matey!) or get GIMP for free.

I stopped using PS in a semi-professional capacity when I discovered that it would crash if I had too many fonts installed on my system. WHAT?!? I think that’s fixed in the newer versions but I haven’t looked back since. I’ve tried the newer versions but wasn’t impressed.

Photoshop: Very capable, very expensive, commercial software with very strict licensing. Only available for Windows and Mac. Somewhat of a memory hog and I really don’t care for the way the UI demands most or all of my desktop when I’m working with it.

The GIMP: Very capable, can do most of what Photoshop can do (even most PS tutorials are useful for GIMP users!) and what it can’t do won’t matter to most of the people who will try it anyway.

Absolutely FREE in every sense of the word and portable: I can pop it on a memory stick or a CD and most “live” linux CDs come with it as well, if I’m using someone else’s computer for a bit. There are installers for more operating systems than most about.com readers have even heard of. I can even run it on Microsoft Xbox 360 if I want. As I need to be flexible to deal with different operating systems from time to time learning an application that will look and function exactly the same on any of them is a huge plus for me.

Last but not least I actually prefer the minimal UI of The GIMP. I can give it my entire desktop or just a small corner of it and still perform the exact same tasks. If I’m working on a project with many repetitive tasks I can “undock” (used to be “tear away”) menus and make them semi-permanent so frequently used items are only a single click away.

16 bit is trickling into the latest development version (it’s been in a branch known as “Film Gimp” for years and even used by major movie production companies), CMYK is available right now as a plugin, and 3D painting? That’s like saying the tire iron in the truck of my car is an EXCELLENT walnut cracker! Need to pound a nail? Buy a hammer.

i won’t claim that gimp is as powerful as ps but it’s close and getting closer. the development curve has taken off in an amazing way.

i like the way gimp2.6 looks and how easy it is to use. there are more and more sites that provide help and tutorials.

gimp can now use ps brushes and most of the ps plugins. there is also a huge amount of plugins written for gimp.

the three areas that i feel ps has over gimp are: 3d, layer styles and cmyk colors. all are being worked on and gimp will soon have layer styles and cmyk.

the gap is rapidly closing and gimp is exciting. like any program, you really have to give it more than a glance, which is what most do before they give-up.

when you take into account the cost of ps and the money these people put into development, its amazing how close gimp is. all done for free.

The annoyance of Adobe limiting the amount a person can install photoshop and putting an expiration on the license of a software that we pay big bucks for is enough to make me switch to GIMP. Adobe puts too much resources in protecting their products, rather than improving their products and making their customers happy. Go kick Adobe but GIMP!

I love the GIMP. Mostly for the same reasons people have already mentioned: switching between windows, pasting selections to floating layers, context-menus, wealth of plugins, docking system just makes sense and it’s easier to spread things out over multiple monitors.

But in addition, in any comparison of software for me, the one that is licensed freely will win over the one that is licensed restrictively. I can’t run Photoshop on my computer because I don’t run Windows on it. Even with WINE newer versions won’t work because of the copy protection systems and licensing service. I can buy a copy of Photoshop and not be allowed to use it. Compare this to GIMP, which I can use on pretty much anything you can click a mouse on.

Support? How about in 5 or 10 years when you remember that old file you want to open and you find you don’t have any software capable of it anymore? GIMP promotes open formats, and the source code is around for happy hackers to coerce into working on your IBM Doohickey 3000.

GIMP is also constantly updating. I don’t have to buy an upgrade every year, which really feels more like I’m renting the software than owning it.

Ad far as the interface goes, I find it’s faster and better than PS. I used to find it impenetrably complicated until I sat down and worked through a couple of tutorials, but I believe I would have felt the same way had I learnt GIMP before Photoshop.

The manual is pretty good these days. It’s online so you can read it without installing the software. There aren’t as many tutorials on youtube as for Photoshop, but there are still plenty.

I used to be a Photoshop user. Now, I’m very pleased to be using GIMP exclusively.

Why cant I open this program on my macbook? I have downloaded it twice, placed it in applications and it still will not open. It says I need some program called X11. Can anyone describe to me what is going on and how I am supposed to fix this without going through hell first?

Terrel, you need to install the X11 environment from your OSX install disk.

While the software is very powerful, the documentation – if present – seems to be all about ego-stroking the programmers.

I was able to edit my images successfully, but am not “allowed” (or encouraged) to save my file in a useful format – say “jpg”, “tif” or “gif”. I can save it into the x-whatever format that the Gimp website will tell you (for HOURS) is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How nice, but doesn’t help my website. I still need a JPG, PNG, or something similar if I am going to USE these lovely images.

So I guess it’s back to Photoshop. Much as I hate to cough up the money, Gimp doesn’t want feedback (or hides it well enough to make it too frustrating to bother) and if I can’t USE the images I’ve created, why waste my time?

That’s a week of my life I will never get back!!

My rating: 2/5 stars

@Kerri

you came save images in the formats you mentioned and in many more formats.

the reason you save a copy in xcf format is to preserve the layers so that you can edit it later.

but again all of those format are available to gimp.

if you want to give it another try and need some assistants i will be happy to help.

@Kerri: These tutorials were created just for you! I hope they help!
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/a/exporting-files.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/tp/save-gif.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/tp/save-jpeg.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/tp/save-PNG.htm
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/gimptutorials/tp/save-tiff.htm

@All: From now on, if you have a critique of GIMP, I ask that you please post it as a user review using the following form: http://graphicssoft.about.com/u/reviews/gimp/gimp-user-reviews/form.htm

I’m leaving these comments open for those who want to ask a question about GIMP. I will pass those on to my GIMP expert, Ian, if they seem like they would make a good tutorial for the site.

I have some problem with creating animation

I personally don’t like Gimp because it doesn’t do as much as Photoshop. It needs to catch up before I will use it as my #1 photo manipulation program again.

gotta dissagree.. ive used paint shop pro, photoshop and gimp. only difference is that gimp is free.. i can do anything ive ever needed to do with gimp and its filters make photoshop filters cry. thank god filter fatory never found its way into linux..i am thinking the author has a real bug up her photoshop. if i did a review of 10 paint programs, i would have to be greener than a blade of grass to miss gimp.. is this the authors first ever article?

seriously, the only thing gimp doesnt have, that photoshop does, are adobe fanboys..

I’ve been using GIMP (2.4 now 2.6) for over 2 years now and yes, there are some tools that PS has that GIMP doesn’t, but for me it’s not the end of the world. Marziah mentioned about painting direct into 3d models (my main interest). There are ways and means around this, for example I use ‘glc player’ and ’save copy as’ a combination that may be more cumbersome but works very easily. There are also many other free programs that can compliment your experience.

I’ve tried PS a few times and just don’t like the interface, possibly because of familiarity.
There are loads of scripts available to help automate functions and even some PS scripts work well with it.
I think it’s a love it or hate it program and this should be borne in mind when reading reviews about it, both positive and negative.
£ for £ (or $ for $) GIMP is, in my opinion, far better value, but it all depends on what you want from your program.

As others have mentioned all the updates are free and I would encourage anyone that didn’t like it because of the interface to wait a couple of months until v2.8 is out and try again. There’s a lot of exciting developments in the pipeline. While waiting impatiently for v2.8 I saw a teaser for v2.10, and it looks to be getting better and better.

If you don’t like GIMP but want free try Paint.net, I know people that do wonderful work with that too.

I personally think that, pound for pound GIMP is much better value than Photoshop. I do like PS, and use it quite often, and I think that there is no way any other graphics editor can beat Photoshop in terms of tools and power. While those tools aren’t actually worth the $500 PS costs, if you want to do some serious image editing I would definitely recommend photoshop; if you’re only doing it casually and for leisure, with no need for powerful 3D manipulation tools, GIMP will do just fine.