I've used PS for ~5 years for hobby work, but I've also spent a fair amount of time in GIMP while using Linux. GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that

I've used PS for ~5 years for hobby work, but I've also spent a fair amount of time in GIMP while using Linux. GIMP is missing some rather powerful tools that PS has, one being content-awareness. In PS, you can remove a section from a bitmap, and have the space filled automatically based on the surrounding image. It works incredibly well, and the technique is used in a number of tools. PS also works much better for shapes/paths than gimp, given its superior set of effects that can be added to shapes. There's also a few not-so-important bells and whistles, like the photomerge script in PS, which makes it really easy to generate a panoramic image. Overall, GIMP works great for simple projects, but it's missing so much of the functionality of PS that I honestly never use it if I have the option to use PS.