I am a long time user of photoshop, I was working on a project were I had to fix low quality jpeg images. A new version of the Gimp had been released and I decided to give it a try. I now use it for all my image editing, all the adjustment and layer options are nore assesable and render faster in GIMP than photoshop. While photoshop is still much more accessable and intuitive, there is no better free alternative.

I love GIMP I have used it for about a year now and although I have photoshop I chhose my GIMP program for most of my image editing and all of my original design work. Good ol' GIMP is easy to use and fun to boot! I give it 4.5 stars because every once in a while she freezes up and I lose my work....

It's the program I use to design my race cars. I've had the program for about a year but I recently began using it to its full potential. I can't say it's better than Adobe Photoshop but it's free and I know it has the same capabilities as Photoshop - and that makes it invaluable!

If you don't have the budget for commercail software GIMP is an excellent opensource alternative. It has all the functionality that you will find in the high end commercial software. I use it extensively for composition using layers. I also use its gridding features to scale my drawings up to larger sizes. It takes a bit of patients to get your head around, but then again all software does.

Highly recommended.