GIMP is very good if you never touch photoshop. It seems using photoshop for any significant amount of time ties you to that software, much like how using emacs for any amount of time ties you to emacs

Just use https://github.com/Diolinux/Photogimp in this case

Unfortunately, Photoshop is easier to use than GIMP, it's ergonomically more functional. This is lost on GIMP's developers (see my other post).