I'm not a professional photographer, nor do I do a lot of image editing. At $500 - $900 for Photoshop, the price is prohibitive for me. I'm kind of in the position of a person who drive four miles to the grocery store twice a week -- I really don't need a the power of a Maserati, and can't afford it anyway. GIMP's free, it works well, and it has more features than I'll ever use. My thanks to all those who are smart enough to create, and generous enough to publish freely, open source software like GIMP.