I've met a good deal of digital artists that use GIMP exclusively - I think this is in part because Photoshop has always been out of many people's budgets and e

I've met a good deal of digital artists that use GIMP exclusively - I think this is in part because Photoshop has always been out of many people's budgets and even more so since they've moved to a subscription-based service. Choices are then down to illegal copies or using open-source software, of which GIMP is generally considered the Photoshop competitor. If anything, I like the program because it brings such things to a much larger portion of the population than photoshop ever can with their price model. It seems to have a larger learning curve and some things are add-ons, but a few things work differently or not as well. I think this is the main drawback, and probably what you are finding when you realize it doesn't seem to meet your needs. Most folks seem to get over this once the familiarity kicks in and they get the add-ons they need... well, added on. Additionally, GIMP can be used across platforms and this is really helpful to some folks. I don't know how it compares to Apple's artistic products as I've never used them. I personally use Paint.net for light photo processing - mostly because I've used it for years. When I started, I needed a lightweight program to make simple things since I had a crappy computer. Of course, most of my needs are lightly editing photos of physical artwork and adding borders (because the borders look nice in the digital format). I keep GIMP installed on my computers, though, and my spouse uses GIMP for his digital work on his computers.