GIMP haters needs to be studied. The amount of extreme petty vitriol that project gets is completely out of proportions.

There's good reason why people are annoyed with GIMP/GIMP developers.

For example, I used to use GIMP and became quite expert at it and would often swap between it and Photoshop. That changed when GIMP's developers removed the Fade feature (similar functionality as in Photoshop). The result is that they turned a perfectly functional program into a clunky mess that was ergonomically horrible to use. Using it was now like going from a modern auto gearbox back to a clunky manual.

Their rationale was that fading was better done by layers and such. Technically that's likely so (depending on what one's doing) but for the rest of us who were happy with the Photoshop-like Fade GIMP suddenly became useless.

GIMP's developers are more interested in some strange notion of technical purity than providing good ergonomic software that ordinary users can use. In short, GIMP's just a play toy for them, benefitting the opensource world isn't on their horizon.

Sure, as GIMP's developers they have the right to fuck up their software, what they don't have the right to do is fuck up bona fide users who've spent a large investment in learning the product by essentially making the product unusable.

Keep away from GIMP, as others have said there are much better alternatives now available.