/me grummble
humm i supose than this copy of photoshop isn t licenced , did you noticed than gimp2 was out , this application is used by proffesionals , is open source so it s a free one , the latest version provides good improvement to the used interface , what can i say more ?.... i know, let emphasis this , i am pretty sure you are looking for the best tool around , in case you just forgot gimp2 is used by proffesionals this mean than they work for compagnies , which have money , which could as well have bought photoshop , but no ! they just choosed one of the best tool around : Gimp.
After this i am not really an artist, and i don t use gimp 8 hours a day, so i can t really speak ,but as far as i tested both ,they seemed clearly close in quality and features, also gimp is mutch more small than photoshop , take less space on HD , consume less CPU , and is faster to load, i think those were the principal reasons who made me use it ( with the free licence).
It\'s like peoples who get 3dsmax without the fsking license, there s blender , i agree than this app is a bit awkward at first, but when talking with blender users , they seems really happy about it and agree than it need a big adaptation time to use it but they wouldn t go back to max. For my part i use wings , this app is great simple to use , have some \'hidden ressources\' than you discover with the time, the UI isn t overcrowded with things, and now ... i am happy.
Also , it s not because you have to pay for something than it s good, there s a bunch of open sources app who are free who are better than the other ... stuff. Look at IE and Mozz , and especialy firebird, this last is better than IE in every way, i can t find a single thing in which IE is superior to firebird , this kind of thing get me sick ( mostly IE that doesn t suport support png transparency) , on my site i still have 60% of IE browsers, i can t really understand why.
Now i think than the problem comes from elsewhere , it s than there s a lot of prefessionals who learned their job at school ( yes , it happens ) and than at scool , they learned to use some proprietrary app , and after that , they were a bit struck with it , and they became more commonely used than open source ones.
note than I didn t said than ALL the open sources app were better than the closed sources ones , i said than there were a LOT of them who are better ( X-chat is wonderfull , isn t it ? )
